


where you keep it

by flowermasters



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Xenophobia, Cultural Differences, Diplomacy, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Himboism, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Injury, Post-Mount Weather, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, Rough Sex, Skinny Dipping, Torture, fuck book 2 all my homies hate book 2, no relation to the other post-s2 au i literally wrote like a week ago, or more accurately:, politics i GUESS, reluctant allies to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26341258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: Bellamy can’t resist the urge to taunt her. “So, what is this place?” he asks. “Has the royal family got a summer home nearby?”Post-S2 AU. Bellamy's been stuck with an ambassador gig. Road tripping with Echo goes differently than he expects.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Echo
Comments: 40
Kudos: 51





	1. we found the way

**Author's Note:**

> back with another "don't think about the details" s3/s4 au fic. this has no relation to the other i posted, so--some of you may sigh in relief, some in disappointment, depending on your preferences. this one's a bit more cheerful, i think. :-) i might fuck around and add to it, idk.
> 
> a note on echo's backstory--kind of a choose your own adventure. if you can't be assed with book 2, make of it what you wish. if you *do* enjoy her backstory as relayed in 6x04, consider what she actually tells bellamy in this versus the assumptions she allows him to make.

Bellamy has no idea where they are. 

They’re somewhere in what was once the northern United States, headed into southern Canada. Beyond that, he couldn’t say. If it weren’t for Echo, he would’ve turned back long ago, or more likely wasted time on a map, trying to orient himself with the mountains around him. Echo doesn’t need a map.

“As vast as Azgeda supposedly is,” Bellamy had said this morning, after he realized she planned to navigate on memory alone, “and you don’t need a map?”

“How would you know how vast Azgeda is?” Echo asked, sounding bored. “You don’t have a map.”

She’s a quiet traveling companion, seemingly not vulnerable to boredom or sleepiness. She hasn’t spoken in a while except to provide direction or answer the occasional question from Bellamy. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t like traveling by vehicle; she’s been a little pale ever since their midday meal, bread and cheese that she handed in pieces to him so he could keep driving. Bellamy suspects motion sickness, although when he asks, she only glowers at him.

She’d wanted to go on horseback. Bellamy had flatly refused.

“It’ll take longer,” he said, days ago, when this mission was first proposed. “We’ll have to carry more supplies. My people can spare the Rover.”

“The villagers will only know travelers on horseback,” Echo argued, her fists clenching slightly at her sides. “This will give them the wrong idea—it could turn them against us. And your beast may not manage the terrain.”

Roan had cut them off, his expression even more sour than usual, annoyed with them. “You’re both going,” he snapped. Then, perhaps realizing he could give Bellamy no such orders, he added, “Echo, the faster we put a stop to this, the better. You know that. Ride with the _branwoda_.”

So now here Bellamy is, eight hours deep into a drive from Polis to the northernmost reaches of Azgeda. The northern lands are, according to Echo, home to a vicious and remote sort of people. Considering the source, that’s saying something. 

In the months since the truce, there’s been whispers in the far north of breaking away from Azgeda—mainly due to mistrust of Skaikru. With the entire coalition so fragile, they can’t afford for Azgeda to back out _or_ nurture a revolt. Thus, Bellamy has been roped into a road trip that could very well be fatal, depending on how remote and vicious these people really are.

“We’ll come to our stopping point soon,” Echo says. “Take the right fork when you come to the boulder in the path.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. Her use of forks and boulders to navigate doesn’t make him any more comfortable with this. “It’s not even dusk yet,” he says. “We can keep going.”

Echo sighs, put-upon, and he glances over at her. Some of her color has returned, at least. She looks a bit more alert, watching the terrain ahead of them with her dark, sharp eyes. “I told you, the terrain is too dangerous by night,” she says. “And that’s not even considering how foolish it would be to ride deeper into these lands, at night, in this thing.”

“Fine,” Bellamy says sourly, and nearly crashes into a boulder when he rounds the curve of a steep hill.

They ride about ten more miles in silence, traveling into a gradually thickening woodland; the rough-hewn path grows damn near too narrow for the Rover to cut. Bellamy has to slow to nearly a crawl. Raven will have his ass on a silver platter if he scratches this thing, much less rips off a solar panel, and they’ll be stranded if anything important is damaged. 

“Are you sure ...” Bellamy begins, and then he glimpses it ahead, through the trees—a lake, the water dark and gleaming in the late afternoon sun.

“Yes,” Echo says, her eyes forward. “We’re here.”

Per Echo’s instructions, Bellamy keeps the Rover at the treeline once they reach a clearing, pulling off the path but only traveling about twenty yards from it. Echo’s out of the car nearly as soon as they stop; to Bellamy’s surprise, she hardly even glances around to assess their surroundings before she walks away from the Rover. 

As he watches, she stretches, slowly craning her neck. Her hair catches a gleam in the dappled sunlight under the tree cover. Bellamy looks away.

He follows suit and gets out. It’s a pretty area—but then, it’s all pretty up here. The lake is moderately-sized, at least by Bellamy’s standards. They’re surrounded on all sides by gentle, rolling mountains—the _Cahseels_ , Echo calls them, in Trigedasleng. For now, everything is still a bright, living green. Bellamy can only imagine how beautiful this place will be when the foliage begins to turn in autumn. 

He walks towards the shoreline to stretch his legs and get a look at the water. Clear enough, so it should be fine. It’s warm out, but not unpleasantly so; still, he could shed his jacket. The air is fresh, clean, with a gentle breeze.

He’s startled when he looks back and sees Echo has followed him, standing now about ten feet away, looking out over the lake. Her expression is hard to parse. She looks thoughtful, almost pensive, but she doesn’t seem displeased. She looks like she’s taking in the view, although Echo, practical and curt by nature, doesn’t really seem like the type to embrace the sublime. She doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to Bellamy, though, and strangely he feels like he’s catching her in a private moment.

“Pretty,” he comments, mostly to remind her that he’s there.

She glances at him. She’s pretty, too, in a sharper, leaner way than the verdant beauty of their surroundings, but no less arresting for it. 

Then she nods once, her expression receding back to cool neutrality. “We should set up camp.”

Bellamy has slept in the Rover before, and could do it tonight—not _well_ , but he could. But if it stays this nice outside, and if he and Echo take turns keeping watch, it should be fine. Maybe even pleasant. 

Setting up camp doesn’t take long; Bellamy’s not sure what her hurry is. Bellamy fills a thermos with water to boil as Echo gathers a small pile of kindling, then begins building the fire about ten feet from the treeline. She takes the sturdy thermos and plunks it directly into the fire to heat the contents. She’s fetched a tarp from the Rover and used it to cover a spot in the grass to sit on; the whole thing feels a bit like a pastoral scene from a book or movie. There are even fruits growing on some of the trees.

Bellamy studies the opposite shore next. He can’t make out anything from here but trees—no buildings to speak of. They must stick out like a sore thumb, even this close to the forest. Of course, Bellamy has his gun at his hip and a knife in his boot, Echo’s bow and sword are in the Rover, and she wears a dagger sheathed at her thigh, so they have no shortage of arms. 

“You’re sure this area is safe?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Echo says, gaze on the fire. “Safe enough.”

“You’ve been here before, I assume.”

She glances up at him briefly through the smoke wafting in front of her face. “What gave that away,” she says dryly. “It’s safe, Bellamy.”

This feels like a gentle rebuke, so he sits down on a nearby log. Echo takes two sturdy pieces of kindling and uses them as makeshift tongs to remove the thermos from the fire and set it aside. 

It’s approaching dusk. They’re in for a hell of a view, as the sun is on track to set directly between two mountains to the west. Echo seems to be following his thoughts—or maybe just following his gaze. “We have a couple hours, still, before full darkness,” she says. “I’ll take the first watch at nightfall.”

All business, as per usual. Bellamy can’t resist the urge to taunt her. “So, what is this place?” he asks. “Has the royal family got a summer home nearby?”

Echo gives him a sharp look. “Don’t be a child,” she says. “You can fetch our dinner, if you’re feeling useful.”

Chastened and loathing it, Bellamy gets up to retrieve the thermos of stew they brought, as well as their bowls, from the Rover. He grabs a jar of moonshine, too, while he’s at it—Monty kindly spared him two. Bellamy’s going to need some if he’s to be expected to fall asleep early. These days, he can only do that when he’s had something to drink. 

Echo doesn’t comment when he first returns, busying herself with the stew, but she glances up when he sits the jar down on the log.

“Water?” she asks.

“Hardly,” Bellamy says.

Her brows twitch together slightly. “Drink, then.”

“I was planning on it,” he says, and she rolls her eyes. He damn near grins at her; it’s really delightful, sometimes, teasing her like this. She never seems truly knocked off balance, but she does flush prettily sometimes. Probably from annoyance—but sometimes he could swear she nearly smiles.

He’ll wait for the stew to finish warming, of course. Bellamy knows better than to drink on such an empty stomach, not when he’s expected to be useful tomorrow. Their small lunch is long gone. He catches himself thinking of the way they’d eaten in the Rover, Echo tearing off hunks of bread and handing them to him periodically as he drove, then shakes off the thought like a buzzing fly.

“We should talk about tomorrow,” he says as Echo takes the food from the fire. “If we leave at dawn or before, what time can we be at the first village?”

“We’ll reach Montreal around midday, probably,” Echo says. “The terrain only gets worse from here. It’ll slow us.”

Bellamy had expected that; the route they traveled today had grown steadily worse as they left the more heavily-settled areas behind. People must seldom travel farther north or head this far south, and the only travel is by foot or horseback, of course. Nothing wider or heavier than a horse-drawn wagon has traveled these roads in a century.

“What’s the plan when we get there?” he asks.

“The plan is for you to be quiet and let me do the talking,” Echo says, giving him an assessing glance before going back to her task. She uses a ragged cloth handkerchief from her pocket as a makeshift mitt with which to handle the thermos, her movements quick, efficient. 

Bellamy murmurs his thanks when she hands him a bowl, but his heart isn’t in it. He already knows he’s mostly along for show, ostensibly to put a face to Skaikru while Echo wheedles or threatens people into compliance as needed. Still, the reminder stings. “Let me guess,” he says. “I won’t be able to understand a word of what’s happening anyways.”

Echo makes a little moue, not looking at him as she pours herself a helping. “Probably not,” she says. “But you must be used to that by now.”

“I’ve picked up some things,” Bellamy says, aware that he sounds sullen and hating himself for it. “I know when Roan calls me _branwoda_ that it doesn’t mean ‘ambassador,’ for example.”

Echo’s mouth twitches into a little smile. “That’s practically an endearment from him,” she says, shifting her weight to sit cross-legged, rather than up on her knees. “Besides, you haven’t heard what he says when you’re not around.”

She’s joking—or maybe not, but she at least means it to be funny. Bellamy nearly smiles, although he’s more surprised than anything.

“Well,” he says, “can I at least trust you to translate the important parts, so I don’t get myself killed?”

Echo’s expression subdues, her brows drawing together again as she looks at him. “Of course,” she says. “No harm will come to you as long as you’re with me.”

Bellamy blinks, startled by the sincerity of this, and Echo looks away quickly.

“And my people?” he says.

“Skaikru, as well,” Echo says. Then, surprising him: “You have my word.”

He’s not sure how much Echo’s word is worth; less, because of who she is, or more, because he’s never actually been given her _word_ before, per se? Either way, he’s knocked too far off-kilter by her tone to come up with a retort. Instead, by way of thanks, he unscrews the lid of the jar and offers the moonshine to her.

Echo grimaces very slightly. “How can you drink that?” she asks. “I can smell it from here.”

“Yeah, it might knock you on your ass,” Bellamy says, withdrawing the offering with a little shrug. “Have it your way.”

He takes a sip and deliberately doesn’t wince with her watching, although the first pull always goes down like a son of a bitch. It hits his stomach and burns like battery acid, but he keeps his expression neutral, holding Echo’s gaze.

Echo stares at him for a beat, looking somehow both mildly annoyed and intrigued at once. After the amount of time they’ve spent arguing, both with each other and with others, Bellamy recognizes the thrill of a challenge in her eyes. 

“Fine,” she says, holding out her hand imperiously. “I’ll try it.”

She nearly chokes on her first sip, a healthy-sized one that leaves her chin shiny as she coughs. Bellamy half-rises from the log, but she waves to still him, her sputters gradually subsiding.

“Told you it’d knock you on your ass,” Bellamy says, with genuine sympathy, as he watches her blink back tears.

Echo gives him a mulish look like she’s been insulted as she wipes at her mouth. She takes another sip, smaller this time, and says calmly, “It’s not so bad.”

Bellamy grins. Echo presses her lips together thinly, like she’s trying not to smile, and hands him the jar back.

“Surely you guys make moonshine,” Bellamy says, watching as Echo takes a careful sip from her bowl, maybe trying to chase away the taste of the alcohol. He’s not sure why he’s pursuing this conversation, except maybe to ward off thoughts about tomorrow. “You have wine.”

“I don’t get many opportunities to drink,” Echo says. “Not—to excess.”

“That’s the only time it’s worth doing,” Bellamy says, before taking another pull. He doesn’t bother to hide his wince this time.

The stew is good, hearty—Bellamy feels pleasantly warm and sluggish by the time he finishes his bowl, although that might be the hooch. To his surprise, Echo accepts the jar when he offers it to her again, and then again, although her sips are cautious, almost delicate. It’s probably for the best; at least one of them needs to be in good working order. 

Her gaze drifts back to the lake again as they sit in silence. Bellamy finds it oddly charming, the way she clasps the large jar between two hands, the grace in her slender fingers. He knows from brushing hands over maps and bread that she has callouses on her palms, no doubt hard-earned.

“What’s this place called?” he asks. “You never said.” 

Echo glances at him, her expression going oddly furtive. She takes another sip from the jar and then hands it back to him. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was to buy time. Or maybe courage. 

“Echo Lake,” she says, as their hands brush. He must blink, or frown, because she says, “That’s the name you’d find on a map.”

Bellamy puts two and two together in the little pause that follows. That explains how she knew the way by heart, then. “You’re from here.”

She glances at him, her brows quirking, then looks back towards the lake. “Nearby,” she says. 

It’s far from the first time he’s considered that he knows less than nothing about her, beyond what he’s observed with his own eyes. Echo’s a spy, as changing and amorphous as a shapeshifter. She’s as courteous or as cruel as a situation calls for, and sometimes manages to be both at once, somehow. She plays her cards so close to the chest that he simply never expected her to volunteer any information about herself.

So she’s named after the lake—but she had to end up a spy for Nia somehow. “How old were you when—when you left?” Bellamy asks. _How old were you when they died?_

“Eight,” Echo says. She reaches for the jar, and he gives it to her. “Anyway. That’s what it’s called.”

Bellamy senses he’s touched a nerve. Oh, well—if he had to walk the halls of Factory Station again, would he want to be asked about his mother? Wouldn’t it feel a bit like walking over her grave?

The sun’s beginning to really set now, orange bleeding across the sky like spilled paint. It’s beautiful, but he can’t quite let himself appreciate it. As the silence lingers, broken only when Echo murmurs thanks as he passes the jar back to her, Bellamy feels a rising urgency to get her to talk again. He’d rather not be too still, if he can help it. It’s been bad enough today, nothing but the drive and Echo to occupy his thoughts, and Echo is the most frustrating kind of puzzle.

“You know,” he says, “when we came down from the Ark—I couldn’t swim.”

Echo looks at him, frowning slightly. “Of course you couldn’t,” she says, as though he’s said something very foolish. “You were born in the sky.”

Bellamy snorts. Her blunt tone comes as no surprise; Echo always seems to understand his meaning perfectly, except when there’s an opportunity for him to make an ass of himself.

Echo shifts as though making herself comfortable, stretching out her legs, planting her heels, then leaning back to rest her weight on her elbows. It’s far and away the most relaxed position he’s ever seen her in. Her thighs are distracting, long and lean. 

“You can swim decently now, I hope,” she says.

“Of course,” Bellamy says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel.

Echo smiles faintly at this. “I grew up swimming wherever I could.”

“That must be why they named a lake after you,” Bellamy says, deadpan, and Echo lets out a surprised laugh.

She’s never done that before, not in front of him, and they’ve spent a pretty extensive amount of time together in the last few months. It feels good—better than he would’ve imagined—to hear it, though it’s a pleasure threaded with a hint of panic. The voice in his head sounds like Octavia’s urgent whisper, or maybe like Clarke in the middle of a lecture. _What are you doing—stop this—stop trying to make her laugh._

Bellamy takes another sip of moonshine. They’ve nearly polished off the jar between them already—he didn’t intend for this. He’s not cowardly enough to stop it, though, and only smart enough to know that he should.

“But what did you do as a child, then?” Echo asks. Her eyes are warm and dark in the dusky light, her cheeks flushed. “In the sky, there’s no water, no trees.”

“You’re telling me, sweetheart,” Bellamy says, rolling his eyes a little. “We made do. I took care of my sister, mostly.”

Echo’s lips part as though she’s about to speak, and then she closes her mouth. It takes a second for Bellamy’s brain to catch up with his own mouth, to understand her quizzical expression for what it is. He shouldn’t have—not to her; he can’t—

He opens his mouth to apologize, or at least to change the subject, but Echo’s expression has already shifted again, this time to a neutral calm that he recognizes. Her eyes narrow very slightly, like she’s assessing him. “You’d get better at it with practice,” she says. “Swimming, I mean.”

“I—I have,” Bellamy says, dumbly. “Practiced, I mean.”

Echo shrugs very slightly, then sits up. “You’re welcome to join me,” she says. “If you like.”

Bellamy gawks at her, but she doesn’t falter. She gets to her feet—he doesn’t miss the slightly clumsy way she pushes up from the ground with her hands—then reaches for the dagger at her right thigh. She unstraps the sheath there, letting it fall quietly aside, then steps out of her boots and toes off her socks. 

All this happens with a practiced quickness as Bellamy watches, stunned into silence. He only regains his ability to speak when she starts walking, now barefoot, away from the camp. “Echo,” he says. “There could be something in that lake.”

“Nothing dangerous,” she calls back without looking. “Snakes, maybe, in the trees.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Bellamy mutters. Then Echo shrugs off her shirt.

He stares in shock at the smooth, pale expanse of her back, then looks away reflexively when her hands move to the waistband of her pants. It feels a bit ridiculous to worry about politeness, though, when Echo is wandering away half-naked. Or rather, not wandering—walking with swift, efficient purpose.

When Bellamy looks back a few seconds later, Echo’s quick strides have brought her to the water’s edge; her legs are long and white in the twilight as she steps in. She doesn’t call out to him or even look back—just wades deeper into the water, then begins to swim.

Bellamy watches her dark head bob over the water for a few more seconds, still stunned. It’s going to be dark soon—and no matter what Echo says, there could be any manner of dangerous things in that lake. But she seems confident, her movements easy and smooth as she floats. It almost feels put on, a display—yet another gauntlet thrown down, as would seem to be Azgeda’s way. But Bellamy has never been able to resist a challenge.

He drains the last of the liquor in the jar, then stands, reaching for his belt to shed his holster. His legs feel a bit wobbly; he’s drunker than he realized. He doesn’t allow himself to dwell on what he’s doing, even once he takes off his boots, then his shirt and pants and finally his shorts. Echo hasn’t looked back at him yet, but he hopes—for both their sakes—that she really is waiting on him to join her.

The rocks and twigs close to the shoreline are hard on the soles of his feet, but he grimaces worse as he steps into the lake; the water’s cold, especially on his drink-warmed skin, and the mud of the lakebed is even colder. He pushes onward, wading out towards Echo as quietly as he can, unable to hide the occasional clumsy splash.

She turns to look at him once he’s about ten feet away, her expression faintly amused. The water here only reaches his midriff, so she must be crouching in order to tread water. In the last of the dusky sunlight he can see her hair floating at her shoulders, but he can only half make out the pale shape of her body under the water.

“You’re shivering,” Echo says.

“Yeah, it’s cold,” Bellamy says dryly, and she rolls her eyes. “This is incredibly dangerous, by the way. Swimming at night, in a lake we don’t know—”

“And yet here you are,” Echo says, watching him. “You don’t mind danger. Sometimes I think you like it.”

“What—” Bellamy says, stymied. “I don’t _like_ danger.”

“Maybe ‘like’ is the wrong word,” Echo says, reaching up idly to tuck a bit of her hair behind her ear. Just the sight of her forearm, the bend of her wrist, is affecting. 

God. He hadn’t realized he’d let it get this bad.

“What about you, then?” Bellamy says. He’s adjusting to the water, bit by bit; the cold is forgettable now, a minor annoyance. “I followed you, remember.”

“Yes,” Echo says thoughtfully. “You did.”

Bellamy sighs. “Do you always talk in riddles, or are you just drunk?”

“I think I’m drunk,” Echo says, and allows herself to float away, kicking her feet up gently. He follows, wary of letting her get too far—not that he’d probably be much help if she caught a current or got tired. He’d be right there with her in the undertow. 

“Echo,” he says, unable to help himself. “Be careful. Please.”

She’s looking up at the sky, maybe taking in the trails of pinkish-orange in the clouds, but she glances at him, nods, then obligingly swims back into shallower waters. She comes closer than he expects, lingering barely five feet away, and Bellamy instinctively bends his knees so that he can tread water, too. Now they’re on the same level, watching each other. 

As cold as it is, it’s been difficult to forget that he’s naked, but her closeness reminds him. She’s seen almost as much, of course—and so has he. The mountain was worse, though, in that way. At least he chose this, although what has possessed him to, he can’t say. He wishes he could see her.

“I’m sorry,” Echo says suddenly. “I shouldn’t—we shouldn’t be doing this, you’re right.”

“It’s not so bad,” Bellamy says. “Once you get used to it. There’s no fish in here, right?”

Echo presses her lips together slightly, an amused expression he’s come to recognize. “Plenty,” she says evenly. “Big ones that bite.”

“Shut up,” Bellamy says, and splashes gently at her, mostly to see how she’ll react; she flinches, but only slightly, and then gives him a dry look.

Bellamy smiles. This is good. They can do this, at least. It’s nice, not having to carry around constant animosity, heavy like a rucksack on his back. Animosity towards her, her people, _his_ people, everything. His back aches, sometimes, from a weight that isn’t really there.

Echo stretches out in the water, her body nearly breaking the surface; Bellamy can see the flat plane of her stomach, the curve of her breasts. “Do you always swim here?” he asks. His voice feels rough, the words ungainly. “When you come through.”

“No,” Echo says. “I haven’t had a reason to come this far north in a long time, anyway.”

“But you come through when you can,” Bellamy says, testing a hunch. He’s finding that he likes it, having some sense of who Echo is and where she comes from; he’s not sure if it’s because the knowledge may somehow prove useful or because it just feels easy, talking to her. He isn’t foolish enough to think that he knows everything, or that he ever will, but—it’s nice, either way.

She nods cautiously, and he says, “What else do you do when you can get away from your people?”

She gives him another one of those assessing looks as she straightens up; even drunk, she’s hard to fool. “My people are my duty,” she says. “I’m never _away_ from it.”

An unsurprising answer, from her, at least. Then she asks, “What do you do when you can get away from yours?”

Bellamy swallows. _Drink. Try to get some sleep._ “I don’t know.”

She drifts closer, holding his gaze, her jaw slightly set. He shifts in the water, vaguely nervous even though he knows what’s coming, what they’ve been building to for—it feels like hours now. Maybe much longer than that.

Then he feels an instinctive sort of panic leap within him when something slimy brushes his leg. 

“What the hell is that,” he says, jerking forwards and upwards, and Echo laughs.

“It’s weeds, just weeds,” she says, rising, too, and then her voice softens, soothing. “It’s alright, Bellamy.”

It’s easy, too easy, to take her into his arms; they’re standing nearly chest to chest already, and he simply closes the distance. Her mouth is soft and warm, the warmest thing he can feel right now, and she sighs very sweetly when he kisses her.

He hasn’t kissed anyone, or really even touched anyone, in months. She’s trembling very finely all over, a thrum under her skin palpable like a rabbit’s heartbeat. He stops kissing her long enough to ask, “Are you cold?”

“No,” she mumbles, looking and sounding more dazed than he’s ever seen her. It feels like it might be the most genuine she’s ever been with him. “I—yes.”

She doesn’t let him finish, kissing him like she’s worried she might lose her chance; there’s a shaky sort of desperation to the way she lifts her arms, wrapping them around his shoulders. The last voice of reason in his head has gone silent now, stymied, overruled. He kisses her back.

Her neck is long, vulnerable, and he can feel her breath hitch when he kisses her there. There’s a hint of herbal soap from her hair, clean and fragrant like rosemary. She smells good, she feels good, he doesn’t _care_ —

“Bellamy,” she says, squeezing his shoulders with her hands.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, okay.”

They fumble out of the lake together, Echo leading the way, more sure of her steps in the water than he is. He grabs at her waist halfway across the grass and pulls her in to kiss her again, enjoying her gasp. He’ll probably never catch her off-guard again, after all.

They make it onto the tarp in an uncoordinated sprawl. The rough weave of the fabric burns his elbows and knees and hands in turn, but Bellamy pays it little mind. There’s, possibly, a hint of shyness in Echo’s demeanor now; by the light of the fire and the rising moon he can see the way she’s biting at her full lower lip, her posture gone tense as she lies on her side, facing him.

“Let me make you come,” Bellamy says, mostly to watch her eyes widen, shocked. “Please.”

She blinks, then nods, looking at his mouth. “Okay,” she says, “yes—”

She wants to be kissed again, that much is clear. She goes into it easily when he eases his body over hers, turning onto her back and sighing into his mouth again, pliant. She makes the softest little noises when he touches her, skimming his hands over her ribs, cupping her breasts. It occurs to him, a strangely rational thought breaking through the fog, that he’ll never be able to listen to her talk about strategy and treaties and fucking _war_ again without thinking of this.

He drags his mouth down over her sternum, then her stomach, and she parts her thighs obligingly. She’s soft and warm and already wet when he licks into her, but she tenses, going momentarily so still that he’s afraid she won’t like this at all. It occurs to him that she may not be used to pleasure; if she doesn’t drink, he can’t imagine she allows herself much of this, either. 

But she relaxes by degrees, reaching down after a moment to cautiously weave her fingers through his hair. It feels good, and he groans softly against her, which makes her squirm. “Bellamy,” she says, “I—oh.”

He starts gauging what she likes by her grip on his hair—when it slackens, he needs to keep at it, and when she gives a gentle tug, he needs to follow her lead. Her hips begin to rock gently, thighs tensing. Her back arches slightly as her grip on his hair tightens at the root, and then she comes, biting off her whimpers, shivering.

He doesn’t let up, keeping at it until she’s squirming, her strong thighs trying to snap closed around his head as she comes again. He could stay like this for hours, slipping into hyperfocus, only aware of her and the distant sound of crickets chirping in the trees.

After a few more moments of this she tugs on his hair, pulling him back. He hisses at the pain in his scalp, and her grip gentles. “Sorry,” she breathes, looking down at him with heavy-lidded eyes.

 _Don’t be_ , Bellamy thinks, or maybe says aloud as he crawls up her body. _Do it again_.

“Bellamy,” she says, right before he kisses her. She doesn’t seem to mind the taste of herself, suckling on his bottom lip as she wraps her arms around him, then her legs. He reaches down, touch clumsy, and then eases inside her. Her sigh mingles with his groan in the warm air between them.

She doesn’t let him get far enough away from her for him to really thrust, but he doesn’t mind; he’s past the point of any sort of finesse, just grinding into her slowly, savoring it. Her breath is warm on his neck, the shell of his ear, and she keeps murmuring his name. It’s heady, the kind of thing that could get addicting. She bites gently on his earlobe and he barely manages to pull out, remembering at the last possible second that she’s not like an Ark girl before his ability to think shorts out entirely. 

She’s surprisingly tactile even afterwards, rubbing light circles over his back as he supports his weight over her. He’s dizzy, overstimulated, and he rolls off of her and onto his side, closing his eyes.

She shifts, rustling on the tarp, moving closer. Their wet skin has dried, cool now in the open air, but her body is warm enough. 

“Echo,” he says, opening his eyes. It feels important that he—tell her something, do something, but his thoughts move sluggishly, honey poured from a jar on a cold day.

“Hush,” she says, her expression thoughtful. “Just a moment longer.”

He nods, and stays quiet, watching her face for a few moments by the flickering light of the fire. It’s nightfall now, soon to be full dark. They should put more wood on the fire. He should get up, get dressed, take the watch. But then Echo closes her eyes, her expression captivatingly serene, and Bellamy doesn’t move. 

He wakes up some time later, uncomfortably cold, shiveringly so; he’s sobered up enough that Echo’s body heat and the flickering warmth of the dying fire aren’t nearly good enough. To his surprise, she’s sound asleep, still curled up next to him. She doesn’t stir when he gets up, but she’s murmuring restlessly by the time he stumbles back from the Rover with their blankets. She quiets when he covers her up, sighing gently in her sleep.

He means to stay awake a while, to keep watch, but their surroundings are peaceful and he’s tired, sleepy and sore from the alcohol working its way out of his bloodstream. If there was anybody—or anything—out here that wanted to hurt them, they’ve had plenty of time.

He wakes alone at predawn, and endures half a moment of panic as he lurches into a seated position, certain that someone has either killed Echo or that she herself is up to no good. Then he glimpses movement at the shoreline and sees Echo standing there, her back to him as she pulls on her shirt. Her hair looks darker, wet—how she can stand swimming or bathing in the chill of early morning, he has no idea, but she must have been. There’s fog out over the lake, peaceful and eerie in equal measure.

He clambers up, muscles and joints stiff from sleeping on the ground, and locates his clothes as quickly as he can, a prickling embarrassment already settling in. He can’t believe what they did—drinking, swimming, _fucking_ —and certainly can’t fathom that he spent a night out here sleeping, unguarded, with not even a knife on either of them. He barely even remembers to check himself for leeches before he yanks his pants back on, though he feels marginally better when he finds none.

Echo starts walking back to camp as Bellamy is sitting on the log, lacing up his boots. She nods at him in greeting when he looks up at her, her expression neutral but guarded. She’s pale in the bluish-gray light, with shadows under her eyes. Her wet hair is braided back into an intricate plait, the kind Bellamy had never quite been able to manage on Octavia when she was a child. Her cheekbones could cut.

“Sleep well?” he asks, because it seems like the diplomatic thing to do.

“To a point,” she says thinly. She bends down to take their thermos of water up from the grass, uncaps it, and takes a long drink. Then she asks, “You?”

“About the same,” he says. “Hungover?”

Echo gives him a wary look. “I’ll be fine.”

“Eat something,” he says. “It’ll help.”

“I said I’ll be fine,” she says, narrowing her eyes, and he bites back a retort. There’s no point in arguing. It unsettles him a bit, how much he doesn’t want her to be upset with him—and not only because their business on this trip is too important to waste time and energy with petty arguments. Ordinarily he’d let her displeasure roll off him like water, or else he’d revel in it, picking at the cracks in her impenetrable facade. Now he has an idea of what it looks like when that facade actually breaks.

Echo takes another sip of water, lingering, then gives him a mulish look. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Bellamy raises his eyebrows.

“For snapping at you,” she says.

“Ah,” he says. “That’s one apology of many, I hope.”

Echo mutters something at him in Trigedasleng, sprinkling some creative additions into her usual _shof op_. Bellamy snorts.

“It’s alright,” he says, tying the final knot off on his bootlaces and rising. “I should’ve, uh, warned you. About drinking that stuff.”

“You did,” Echo says, eyeing him. “And I did it anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says. “I guess you did.”

She holds his gaze for a moment, then extends her long arm, holding out the thermos to him. More out of instinct than anything, he steps closer to accept the offering. His fingers brush hers, clumsy, and he could curse himself for the shiver of embarrassment that runs up his spine. 

“We have important business to take care of today,” she says, watching him, lifting her chin slightly. Assessing him, as always. “We should leave soon.”

“Ready when you are,” Bellamy says.

So they’ve come to an agreement, then, entirely without saying the words; they’re not going to talk about last night. It’s for the best, of course, although Bellamy childishly resents feeling like Echo’s gotten her way over his. It’s not like he _wants_ to talk about it. He ought to be putting it from his mind, possibly forever, but certainly for the duration of this trip, when he’s going to be cooped up in the Rover with her for at least a few more days. And nights.

They pack their meager supplies back into the Rover quickly, and Echo dumps water from the lake onto the embers of the fire. Bellamy takes out another small loaf of the bread they brought to make for a morning meal, though he’ll almost certainly be eating it while driving again, trusting Echo to divvy up their shares and remember the way.

Echo’s shivering visibly once they get back into the Rover, no doubt chilled from her wet hair; Bellamy cranks the engine quickly and hikes up the heat output for her. She doesn’t seem to notice, her gaze on the windshield—the lake. The fog is just beginning to recede, though the sun hasn’t quite broken over the mountains yet. Echo’s expression has returned to that unreadable state again, somehow both pensive and focused all at once.

“Will we come back through here?” Bellamy asks. “On our way back.”

Echo shakes her head, her mouth quirking slightly. “It’ll be out of our way, coming back from Tronto.”

“Shame,” Bellamy says, looking at her. “It really is beautiful.”

Echo nods, then glances at him, smiling very briefly. “Yes,” she says. “It is.”


	2. round the bend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m going to hear the people’s grievances,” Echo says. “To relay them back to Roan.”
> 
> “Just when I thought things couldn’t get more medieval,” Bellamy says dryly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... y'all heard sumn?
> 
> #notmybellamy
> 
> look man. idk. i told y'all i might add more and nobody stopped me. just assume this diverged from canon earlyish in s3.
> 
> handwavey politics, this is a coping mechanism, etc. title from "feels like magic" by sports.

Somehow, the people of the far north are even surlier than all the rest.

Bellamy hasn’t been watched so closely in his entire life, and that’s saying something. Echo convinced him to leave the Rover before they made it more than a mile into the city, and Bellamy agreed once he saw a couple of fleet-footed children running down the street ahead of them, probably hurrying off to warn of outsiders. The Rover can withstand a lot, but Bellamy didn’t like the prospect of turning a corner and finding a population armed to the teeth and waiting for invaders. He’s realizing now that they might still encounter that, only without the means for a swift exit, and is rethinking this choice.

Echo leads the way, her back tall and straight like she has absolutely nothing to fear. Montreal is the most intact city Bellamy has seen; it must’ve fared better in the apocalypse, or else been treated better in the decades since. The buildings are only actively crumbling on the outskirts, at least, and the streets are clean enough. It’s not as crowded as Polis or Troy, but there’s still a healthy number of people roaming the streets at mid-afternoon. Adults pause in their dealings on the streets to watch them pass; children slink into shadows and doorways, their eyes big. 

Except the young children, everyone is scarred—some of them disturbingly so, with intricate silver carvings marking up most of their faces. With her unmarked spy’s face, Echo might as well be every bit the outsider that Bellamy is, walking through these streets.

“This the kind of reception you were expecting?” Bellamy asks quietly, as a man pulling a cart stops directly in their path to stare at them, forcing Echo to sidestep.

“This is the friendliest reception you’re going to get,” Echo says without looking over her shoulder at him. The sword sheathed at her hip rattles slightly with each step she takes; she rests her hand on the hilt to quiet the sound. “Hush now.”

They seem to be on a main thoroughfare, a wide street that’s growing increasingly more populated. They’ve been walking for some time now, at least thirty minutes. Bellamy really fucking wishes they hadn’t left the Rover. If it’s damaged—

There are hoofbeats nearby, swiftly approaching down a side street; Bellamy and Echo stop walking in unison and turn to face the sound. Echo startles him by flinging her hand out, grabbing briefly at his forearm before he can even think to reach for his gun. 

“Be still,” she says, not looking at him, and lets go. Her expression is entirely calm, her eyes slightly narrowed in the afternoon sun. She’s in her element, much as he is out of his.

Three men on horseback ride into the main street, each one surlier than the last. One—the oldest, tanned with a shaggy gray beard—takes the lead, asking Echo a lengthy question in Trigedasleng. The two others linger behind, both of them staring at Bellamy. He stares back, even though Echo expressly told him not to do that on the way here.

Echo purses her lips slightly, then answers in kind. “ _Ai laik Echo kom Haihefa Shilkru_ ,” she says. She tips her head slightly to her right to indicate Bellamy. “ _Em laik bandrona kom Skaikru_.”

This seems to amuse the questioner—he snorts, at least, and shakes his head. He asks another question, too rapidly for Bellamy to parse any of the language, and Echo responds at length. Her tone is neutral, unwavering; she raises her voice, as though intending to be heard by the increasing number of onlookers filtering into the street.

The men on horseback exchange looks, and the one in the lead mutters something to his fellows. Then he nods, looking—not quite pleased, but interested. He nods sharply at Echo, then tugs on his horse’s reins to turn the animal around. He sets the horse at an easy walk, his men following suit, and heads back down the street he came up, clearly intending to be followed.

“Come,” Echo says, and starts to walk after them. 

“Where are we going?” Bellamy asks, following, aware that even more eyes are on him than before. “Who was that? Their leader?”

“Yes—Rence,” Echo says, muttering this lowly enough that Bellamy has to hasten his pace to get close enough to hear her. “And his sons. We’re being taken to the town hall.”

“For what?” Bellamy asks.

Echo’s nostrils flare slightly as she inhales. She seems slightly annoyed, although Bellamy’s not sure whether it’s at him or something else. “I’m going to hear the people’s grievances,” she says. “To relay them back to Roan.”

“Just when I thought things couldn’t get more medieval,” Bellamy says dryly. 

Echo raises her eyebrows at him, so he says, “I’ll explain later.”

The town hall, as it turns out, is the lobby floor of what looks like—based on its size and Bellamy’s limited experience with pre-apocalyptic movies—a mid-rise hotel. Like in Polis and Troy, the high-rise buildings seemed to have fared the worst over the years. Rence and his sons leave their horses tethered out in front, then separate; one son leaves, the other goes to fetch servants from elsewhere within the building, and Rence remains, observing as a wooden table and chairs are brought into the empty room and set up. There’s a layer of grime covering what might’ve once been an ornate tile floor, and the place is dark and grim with only torchlight, but overall Bellamy gets the impression that this is something they would orchestrate for visiting dignitaries. Which, he supposes, is technically what he is, though he couldn’t possibly feel less like one.

What follows is, in fact, an exercise in his own uselessness; his job is to sit there quietly as townspeople are led in, one by one, most seemingly in varying stages of awe at their circumstances, to speak with Echo. Rence and his sons speak on occasion, but Echo does most of the work, her demeanor stately and professional. 

Bellamy, it seems, is there purely to be stared at.

This goes on for some time—at least an hour, with each petitioner getting about five minutes each. Sometimes the villagers seem angry, raising their voices slightly or going on tirades in Trigedasleng, but Echo never falters. Bellamy is familiar with her microexpressions from his role as ambassador, though. After months of witnessing her in talks with Roan, Roan’s courtiers, and various figures from other clans, he can track the flare of her nostrils, the arch of her shapely brows, the occasionally expressive play of her mouth. She’s entertaining this, he can only assume, to appease these people and their grievances with Azgeda’s leadership, but she clearly finds it tiresome.

This Echo is very different from the one he saw last night—this is the Echo he’s familiar with, untouchable and calculated. For some reason, though, he’s having a hard time shaking the thought of her as she was at the lake. That Echo smiled, stretched out on the grass; her looks lingered. He knows what she tastes like now.

Finally, a break is called; a fresh pitcher of water is brought in, and Rence and his sons move about the room, stretching their legs and muttering to one another. Echo looks at Bellamy for the first time in an hour. “Are you alright?” she asks.

“Peachy,” Bellamy says.

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Your knee has been jumping for the last ten minutes. Are you that bored?”

He stills, cheeks flushing, and resists the urge to pull a face at her. “My apologies,” he says wryly. “You weren’t lying when you said I wouldn’t be able to understand anything that’s happening.”

“You haven’t missed much,” Echo says lowly, shifting in her creaky chair to speak more closely to him. “Complaints about trade and politics, mostly. Most of them feel that they’ve been forgotten, which is to be expected. Queen Nia never gave these people their due.” 

Now it’s Bellamy’s turn to raise his eyebrows; this is the only thing resembling criticism of Nia he’s ever heard Echo make. She’s even defended the queen from Roan. As if realizing this, Echo frowns slightly before busying herself with the water pitcher. 

“Have they said anything about Skaikru?” Bellamy asks. It has occurred to him more than once during the last few hours that he’s placing a great deal of trust in Echo here. Nobody in Arkadia would be especially pleased with this—but he and Clarke are the only ones Roan will deal with, and Clarke is probably in Polis right now, playing nice with much more important people, so it’s his call to make.

“They’ve asked some questions,” Echo says. “Expressed their distrust. Each has asked whether or not you can understand them, although I think the glazed look in your eyes gives it away a bit.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll make time for Octavia to teach me, okay?”

Echo smiles, thinly but genuinely. “I’ll teach you some things on the way to Tronto,” she says, meeting his eyes. “I suspect you’ll need it more there.”

Bellamy’s not sure what to make of this, but he doesn’t like the sound of it. “What about them?” he says, nodding his head very slightly to indicate the father and sons talking by the door. “They speak English?”

“Definitely,” Echo says. “So be polite, if you’re spoken to.”

It seems unlikely they plan on acknowledging his existence at all, but Bellamy doesn’t dare say that with them in the room. “Well,” he says, “good thing I’m known for my charm.”

“Are you?” Echo says, raising her eyebrows. “Certainly not for your skills as a diplomat.”

There’s a glint of amusement in her eyes, quiet and warm. Bellamy flushes, despite himself. He’s not accustomed to being teased back. “Guess I’ve gotten this far on looks, then.”

Echo’s mouth quirks wryly. She’s trying not to laugh. She opens her mouth to speak, but movement at the door draws her attention; Rence and his sons are returning to the table, accompanied by the next villager. Echo straightens in her seat, her expression shuttering like a curtain drawn, and beckons the man forward as she has all the others.

Bellamy recognizes this one—the man with the cart who stopped in their path. He doesn’t waste time with his questions, slouching in his seat and speaking in a quick, nonchalant tone. His gaze flicks back and forth occasionally between Bellamy and Echo like he’s taking in some kind of match.

Bellamy can’t follow the conversation, but he can tell Rence and his sons are listening avidly; both sons look vaguely amused, while their father is impassive behind his thick beard. Echo’s expression betrays nothing, even as the line of questioning speeds up. Her thighs have tensed slightly under the table, her upper body tilting forward almost imperceptibly, like at any moment she might plant her hands on the table and rise from her chair. Noticing this has Bellamy resisting the urge to shift uncomfortably in his own chair. If Echo is tense, he must be missing something.

“ _Hashta em?_ ” the man asks, jerking his head slightly to indicate Bellamy. His eyes are on Echo. “ _Em joken yu_?”

To Bellamy’s surprise, Echo smiles thinly—and not in the way she does when she’s trying not to laugh. This smile is sharp, hardly amused at all. “ _Mebi_ ,” she says, shrugging slightly. “ _Beda em kom yu_.”

This seems to be some kind of turning point; one of Rence’s sons snorts audibly, and the villager scoffs, his eyes bright and mischievous. Then Rence says, “ _Taim odon_ ,” which Bellamy knows by now means _time’s up_.

Once the villager has slouched from the room, Echo looks to their hosts. “Choose wisely from the rest,” she says, the order casual but firm, her choice of English clearly meaning she wants Bellamy to understand this, too. “I have plenty to tell the king.”

There’s surprisingly little pushback from the three men on this order; perhaps they’re tiring of this little display, too. The next handful of villagers are relegated to two minutes each, and seem to be, on the whole, more courteous than their predecessors. Echo sees ten more before she puts a halt to things, rising easily from her seat. Bellamy and the other men follow suit, eyeing each other from either side of the small table.

“That’s enough, I think,” Echo says, eyeing Rence. “Unless you have any questions for me? Or for the ambassador?”

Rence looks at Bellamy, raising thick gray brows. “No,” he says after a moment. “If the king trusts these people, I will trust the king’s judgment.”

Bellamy withholds a scoff; Roan trusts Skaikru about as far as he can throw Bellamy. That’s still a little bit farther than Azgeda tends to trust anyone, though. “Thank you,” Bellamy says, as neutrally as he can, and Rence nods. 

Bellamy extends a hand to Rence once Echo leads the way around the table. Rence accepts the gesture, clasping briefly at Bellamy’s forearm; his hand is so large and powerful that Bellamy feels a bit like a child in his grasp. Echo observes this, then nods once, curtly, like she’s approving something. Bellamy resists the urge to roll his eyes at her.

“Do you have rooms for us?” Echo asks. “We’ll depart at dawn tomorrow, but we’ve been traveling for over a day already.”

Rence nods, then mutters to his sons; one of them peels off, presumably to fetch a servant. They’ve brought packs with weapons and fresh clothes in preparation for this request, but there’s still one other thing to consider. 

“The Rover,” Bellamy mutters to Echo.

She gives him a dry look, as if to say _I was getting there_ , and switches to Trigedasleng, presumably to talk shit about the Rover without Bellamy being able to understand—or maybe just to explain the concept of a car to someone who’s never seen a working one before in their preferred language. As long as it’s guarded, Bellamy could care less. 

That takes care of the other son, who leaves just as his brother returns with a servant. After exchanging salutations with Rence, they’re led off to a stairwell by a servant, who takes them up one flight to a floor with long, torchlit halls and numerous identical wooden doors. Bellamy only realizes how closely he’s following Echo when she comes to a stop and he nearly bumps into her. He flushes and backs up, though she mercifully doesn’t acknowledge the movement. 

Their rooms are side-by-side; Bellamy’s contains a double bed, a wooden table and two chairs, a couple candles for light, and not much else. He has about thirty seconds to himself, during which time he sheds his pack and splashes water from the available basin on his face, before Echo is at his door.

He knows it’s her, of course—who else would come knocking for him here? He lets her in without a word, and she paces into the room, frowning slightly.

“Something wrong?” he asks, locking the door behind her.

“No,” she says, coming to a stop by the table in the corner. “That went well, all things considered. Better than expected.”

“Yeah, these people are really hospitable,” Bellamy says, and Echo rolls her eyes at him.

“Don’t complain,” she says. “You’re not the one who had to listen to a few dozen people complain about trading their grain.”

“Actually, I did,” Bellamy points out, “I just don’t know the word for ‘wheat.’”

Echo cracks an unwilling half-smile at this, and Bellamy approaches the table, taking his pack out of the chair he’d deposited it in upon entry. “Sit,” he says.

She does, and so does Bellamy, although he’d rather do anything but sit after the day they’ve had. The table is tiny, making their seating arrangement slightly more intimate than is ideal. 

“You—did well,” Bellamy says, trying to ignore the way Echo’s knee brushes his. “From what I could tell.”

Echo shrugs. “There isn’t much to it. Stick to your authority, and one way or another, they’ll respect it.”

Bellamy has some idea of what Azgedan authority looks like. “‘One way or another.’”

Echo raises her eyebrows. “Roan likes to say we can be the carrot or the stick.”

Bellamy snorts at this, but his amusement doesn’t hold for long. “You’re sure we’re safe staying here?” he asks. He has a split second thought of Echo going back to her room and finding a shadowy figure there waiting for her, then dismisses it quickly. Echo is one of the most lethal people he knows. She’ll be fine.

Echo looks like she was expecting this question. She shifts in her seat and sheds her light coat, making herself comfortable. “They won’t try anything—Rence is quiet, not stupid. They don’t know what Skaikru will do to them if you’re harmed, and I doubt they fully trust the king to protect them.”

“What about you?” Bellamy asks. “Roan wouldn’t—?”

Echo raises her eyebrows slightly, and Bellamy stops talking, already aware he’s asked a dumb question. “Probably not,” Echo says. “I’m useful but expendable. It’s my job.”

Bellamy doesn’t like hearing her talk this way, although he’s not quite sure why. Maybe because if she’s incapacitated in some way, he’s alone in foreign lands—or maybe because the words _useful but expendable_ hit close to home. He doesn’t let the moment linger. “What is your job, anyway?” he asks. “Emissary, advisor, spy. You’re a jack of all trades.”

Echo rolls her eyes. “Today my job is to listen to people moan, apparently.”

Bellamy assumes he’s included in that; he pulls a face at her. “Tomorrow it’s a deep cover mission, then?”

“Maybe,” Echo says, giving him a hint of that knife’s-edge smile from earlier.

There’s a knock at the door, and, at Echo’s expectant glance, Bellamy gets up to answer it. It’s the same servant girl from before, this time bearing two small trays of food; she must’ve gone to Echo’s room first and received no answer. Bellamy takes the trays, tells her _mochof_ , and returns to the table.

They’ve been brought cups of spiced wine and bowls of a creamy dish, chicken with mushrooms. After several meals in a row consisting largely of plain brown bread, Bellamy is hungry enough to forgo any further distrust of their hosts. Judging by the way she tucks in, Echo is, too. 

It’s one of several meals they’ve shared together in the name of diplomacy, even outside of the last thirty-six hours, but the setting is still messing with Bellamy’s head a little. Maybe it’s the candles. He can see their flickering light reflected in Echo’s eyes.

“I’m impressed,” Echo says, after a few moments of quiet. “You managed a ‘thank you.’”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “It might surprise you that I’m not _completely_ useless.”

“I don’t think you’re useless,” Echo says over the rim of her cup. Before Bellamy can pick apart her idea of a compliment, she continues, “I think you’d be a lot more useful, though, if _you_ stopped thinking that you’re useless.”

Bellamy waffles for a few seconds, then reaches for his own wine. “I don’t need a lecture.”

“I’m not interested in lecturing you,” Echo says.

“Yeah, well, you’d be the first,” Bellamy mutters.

“It frustrates you,” Echo says, in between small, neat bites of her food. “Feeling like an outsider. So change it.”

She speaks patiently, like she’s explaining something to a child. Her poise is truly irritating sometimes, especially when Bellamy knows the ruthlessness it disguises.

“Let me guess,” Bellamy says. “Learn the language, maybe get some tattoos, and I’ll fit right in with the grounders.”

“It seems to have worked for your sister,” Echo says mildly. 

“Don’t talk about my sister.”

Echo arches a brow, then lets her expression relax. “I meant no offense.”

He knows she didn’t, but he feels cornered all the same. He lets the line of conversation drop, taking a long sip of wine instead of replying. It’s good, mild, with a taste that reminds him of apples. 

“What was that earlier, by the way?” he asks after a moment, watching Echo cut a mushroom with her knife. “There was one guy I thought you were going to—deck, maybe. I don’t know.”

Echo doesn’t look up. “There were a few moments where I considered that.”

“You know the one I’m talking about,” Bellamy says, on a hunch. “He asked you something about me.”

Now Echo does look up, meeting his gaze with a blunt look. “That one,” she says. “He said King Roan has gotten into bed with Skaikru. Then he asked if I’ve gotten into bed with you.”

Bellamy sits his cup down. “Oh,” he says, unsure what to make of this. He’s not sure Echo will appreciate righteous indignation on her behalf. “What did you say?”

Echo’s gaze doesn’t falter. “I said better you than him.”

“Well,” Bellamy says. “Don’t flatter me, or anything.”

Echo raises her eyebrows innocently. “Why should I worry about flattering you?”

Bellamy remembers to snap his mouth closed a second too late. Echo smirks, catlike, undeniably smug at his expense. _This_ is what infuriates him about her—he can never quite pin her, even when he tries. He thought they weren’t going to talk about last night, and now she’s called it to mind—not that it ever really left. She’s always, _always_ one step ahead of everyone else, including him.

“Yeah?” he says, holding her gaze. “Get on the bed, then, and I’ll show you how useful I can be.”

They shouldn’t do this. Bellamy shouldn’t, for a million reasons, almost all of them starting and ending with Mount Weather. They’re sober now, or at least mostly—that’s another reason. But when Echo stands, he stands, too, and kisses her—and she kisses him back.

He backs her towards the bed, their legs tangling and nearly tripping them both; he doesn’t care about grace, doesn’t even much care about stopping to take his boots off. Echo sits down heavily on the edge of the bed, looking up at him with dark eyes, and Bellamy is nearly overwhelmed by the plethora of things he wants to do to her. He wants to make her come again; he wants her to say his name like she did last night, murmuring it into his ear, over and over. He _wants_ , so much, has been wanting something like this for longer than he cares to admit.

He herds her backwards onto the bed, supporting his weight over her and kissing her again, roughly. This is different than last night—faster, meaner, the frustrations of a long day hissing out like steam. He bites her lip gently, testing the waters, and she only bites back harder. 

He shoves a hand up her shirt, and she moans, tugging roughly at his hair. When he fumbles open the tie-front of her pants and slips a hand in, she doesn’t protest. She bites her lip, her eyes on his face, as he presses his thumb over her and rubs, gently at first. “You been waiting on this all day?” he asks.

Echo looks a bit dazed already; this he remembers. “Shut up,” she says, her breath shortening as he gradually increases the pressure, then the speed, of his thumb.

“You have,” Bellamy says. “You think I can’t see the way you look at me?”

Echo says nothing, her lips parted uselessly, rocking her hips against his hand. “Because I can,” Bellamy says. “Admit it. You’ve wanted me to fuck you for months. You just didn’t expect me to actually do it.”

She kisses him, probably to shut him up, but he allows it. He kisses down her jaw to her neck, using his teeth there; he has the vague but irrepressible desire to leave marks, marks that she’ll have to carry back to her people, her king, to bear under their scrutiny.

Echo comes quietly, shuddering under him, and grabs at his wrist to still his hand. He gentles his touch obligingly, kissing at her throat now, then grunts in surprise when she abruptly muscles him off of her.

She pushes him over onto the bed, then straddles his lap, her expression hard, determined. There’s a hectic flush on her cheeks, spreading down her neck to her chest. He wants to bite her again. 

She grinds down on him, smiling when he inhales sharply. Then she shifts her weight so that she can undo his belt.

Her touch is gentle enough, but her palm is dry; the callouses on her fingers send sparks of painful electricity up through him. That’s good, though. Something like this, with her—it should hurt a little bit. Last night he was too gentle by half, and so was she.

He’s staring at her, unable to look away from her collarbones, her long neck, her full, pink mouth. Her breath smells faintly of apples. “What does this say about you, then?” she asks, shaping the words cruelly. “That _you_ want me this bad?”

She grabs him gently by the hair with her free hand, tugging his head back slightly to make him look her in the eyes. A hot flush of shameful pleasure washes over him as she holds him there with her hand and her gaze. In truth, he doesn’t know what any of this says about him. But it’s not hard to imagine.

“Echo,” he says, “Echo, I—”

He can’t help the jerk of his hips as he comes, but he can shut his eyes, unwilling to give her that final bit of satisfaction. Her grip on his hair relaxes, going terribly gentle; she pulls her fingers through it in almost a caress when she lets go.

Bellamy opens his eyes and finds her watching him, her expression—serious; she’s studying him. He’s never felt more like a riddle to be solved. He doesn’t know what to say; something sarcastic, something biting, the usual, but nothing comes to mind.

She stays there for a moment longer, kneeling over his lap while his breath slows, each of them watching the other. Then it’s like watching a shade be drawn; her expression closes off, every bit of her hidden away. She wipes her hand on the blanket, businesslike, then lifts herself off of him and stands.

Bellamy feels a bit like he’s underwater as he sits up and reaches for his zipper, watching as she straightens her own clothing. “You should get plenty of rest tonight,” she says, her brow furrowing slightly. She might as well be leaving one of their countless treaty meetings, save for a pink mark already visible high on her neck. “You’re going to need it tomorrow.”

Bellamy clears his throat. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

Because she made him come, mostly, but also because he’s genuinely tired, his head already heavy with the kind of ache that mental exhaustion brings. Not too tired, though, to watch Echo closely as she goes back to the table to fetch her coat. The hilt of the dagger at her thigh gleams silver in the candlelight as she moves. Shit, he’s still got his holster on. Their food sits barely half-eaten on the table.

As if realizing this, Echo picks up her wine and takes a long sip, draining the cup. Then she sets it down, licks her bottom lip, and says, “Good night.”

“Echo,” Bellamy says as she moves towards the door, feeling strangely—shocked? Stung, maybe. It’s not that he _wants_ her to stay; he just didn’t expect her to bolt quite so quickly. They need to talk—about today, about tomorrow, about what happens next. There’s always something to discuss.

“Yes?” she says, looking back at him coolly.

Bellamy swallows. “Nothing,” he says. “Sleep well.”

Echo raises her eyebrows, but only slightly. She’s untouchable, in more ways than one. "Sleep well," she says. “See you at dawn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ai laik Echo kom Haihefa Shilkru. Em laik bandrona kom Skaikru._ I'm Echo of the King's Guard. He's the ambassador from Skaikru.
> 
>  _Hashta em? Em joken yu?_ What about him? Is he fucking you?
> 
>  _Mebi. Beda em kom yu._ Maybe. Better him than you.


	3. is there a wrong time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t be so dramatic,” Echo says. “Tronto will require more effort than Montreal, that’s all. It’s a hard place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: canon-typical violence/torture, injury, blood
> 
> canon can't hurt me anymore, baby. i've transcended!
> 
> title from "you are the right one" also by sports.

“Again.”

“ _Oso tai_ . . .” Bellamy sighs. “ _Oso tai choda op kom jus_.”

“Like you mean it, not like you’re having a tooth pulled.”

“If I have to swear a blood oath today,” Bellamy says, “you can bet I’m not going to be cheerful about it.”

Echo snorts humorlessly, shifting in her seat. The movement draws his attention to the slight spread of her thighs, which does not improve his mood. “Where we’re going,” she says, “you won’t find much cheer at all.”

Bellamy swallows. They aren’t far from Tronto now; they’ve been on the road since before dawn, and it’s already past noon. Echo has done little to assuage his nerves this morning, and he knows she can sense them. 

She doesn’t seem especially upbeat herself today, even by her standards—she’s been serious, almost grim, while drilling him on greetings and customs. He noticed first thing this morning that she changed her hair; in Montreal, she wore a pretty but severe braid, and today she’s left her hair down, with small braids binding it back from her face. He hopes it’s an aesthetic choice and not a sign that she’s prepared for battle. 

“I hope your king hasn’t sent us to our deaths,” he says. “Because the way you’re making it seem, we’d be a lot better off just turning around and going home.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Echo says. “Tronto will require more effort than Montreal, that’s all. It’s a hard place.”

Bellamy steers the Rover around a pile of concrete rubble in its path. “You’ve been before, I assume.”

“Once,” Echo says, “when Queen Nia visited their leader years ago. Her name is Mara. I didn’t meet her then—but I’ve heard many stories.”

“Stories?”

“Yes,” Echo says, her tone slightly distant, as though speaking from a place of reverence. “Her capabilities as a fighter are legendary. My father was from Tronto. He witnessed her kill at least two dozen Sangedakru warriors, unaided, after an ambush.”

They’re several hours by vehicle from the region Echo said she was from—weeks through the wilderness, probably, on horseback. 

“But he left,” Bellamy says. “Your father.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Echo turn her head to look at him; when he glances at her, he finds her frowning slightly. He gets the impression he’s been more perceptive than she anticipated—or perhaps that she didn’t mean to mention her connection to the place at all, and spoke without thinking.

Echo schools her expression, and Bellamy turns his eyes forward again. “Yes,” she says. “He lost his right arm in the same skirmish. He couldn’t fight after that.”

Before Bellamy can say anything to this, she says, “Introduce yourself again.”

He rolls his eyes. “ _Ai laik Bellamy_ ,” he says flatly. “ _Bandrona kom Skaikru_.”

“ _Belomi_ ,” she enunciates.

He glances askance at her as the Rover judders over a patch of crumbling asphalt. They’ve been traveling through flatlands for some time now, frequently passing clusters of ruins—fallen buildings, houses. “I told you, I’m not saying it that way,” he says. “My name is Bellamy. They can at least respect that much.”

“Fair enough,” Echo says dryly. “This might be all for nothing, anyway. If she speaks to you, I’ll translate when possible. I just don’t expect her to be very accommodating.” 

Bellamy snorts and glances at her. “What, like Rence and his people were?”

Echo purses her lips. “Make your jokes now,” she says. “Look ahead.”

The jagged fringe of a city skyline on the horizon came into view several minutes ago. “Yeah, I see it.”

“ _No_ ,” Echo says. “Look harder.”

“What?” Bellamy says, squinting. Then he sees what she means—a lone figure on horseback, riding at a full gallop towards the city, far enough ahead to be missed at first glance.

“Shit,” Bellamy says, and immediately increases the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal. “Don’t worry, we can catch him.”

“Don’t bother,” Echo says. “Let him warn them.”

Bellamy glances at her again, this time out of incredulity. “What, so they can marshal their troops before we get there?” 

Her expression is serious but calm, her eyes forward. He doesn’t miss the way she’s gripping the edge of her seat, though, probably in response to the increase in speed. 

“Maybe,” she says. “Better chances of talking our way out of things that way than if we surprise them, I think. Their gates will be guarded. We don’t want any alarm bells rung.”

Bellamy swallows against the acidic tang of panic rising in his throat, then slowly lifts his foot. “Don’t ask me to leave the Rover behind this time.”

“Only if we have to,” Echo says thinly. “It has its usefulness.”

Silence falls as they continue their approach. There’s no way they could truly surprise a guarded city with the way they’re moving—the Rover will stick out like a sore thumb from any decent vantage point, and they’re traveling rapidly. The closer they get, the easier it is to make out a wooden wall standing at least five meters high in the rubble around the outskirts of the city. The crumbling road leads directly to a wooden gate, which stands open. 

“Slow down,” Echo says.

“And give them an easy target? Sure,” Bellamy says, but his heart isn’t in it. He eases off the gas.

“Be calm, Bellamy,” Echo says tiredly, reaching behind her seat and withdrawing her sheathed sword.

“I _am_ calm,” Bellamy says, even though he knows they’re both watching figures on horseback and men on foot appear, thronging at the city’s entrance, now only fifty meters ahead. 

At Echo’s direction, Bellamy slows even further, until they’re moving at nearly a crawl. The figures at the gate, at least fifteen by Bellamy’s count, begin to approach. Their drawn swords glint in the sunlight. Movement at the top of the wall draws his eye—three archers stand there, bows at the ready.

“Stop,” Echo says, once the Rover and the guards are within twenty meters of one another. Bellamy brakes as she continues speaking. “At my sign, you get out. Be alert, but don’t draw your weapon. Understand?”

He nods, and Echo opens her door and steps out.

The guards continue their approach, then stop about five meters away—close enough that they could swarm the Rover in seconds. “ _Ai laik Echo kom Haihefa Shilkru_ ,” Echo calls out. She doesn’t shut her door, but she does step out from behind its protection. “ _Bandrona kom Skaikru gon ai._ _Weron Mara?_ ”

One of the men on horseback grunts something at Echo, and she answers, her response unintelligible to Bellamy—he catches the word _Skaikru_ again, but that’s it. Then Echo looks back at him and nods once, and he has no choice but to get out of the Rover.

Echo walks around to the front of the Rover, sticking close to the hood; Bellamy follows suit. The throng of guards shifts and parts, and a woman walks forward into the empty space. She’s shorter than Bellamy would’ve expected, standing at least half a foot shorter than him and Echo, with russet-colored skin and thick black hair streaked lightly with gray. The silvered scars at her temples look like lightning bolts, at least from this distance. She stalks forward with a calculated tread that reminds him, more than slightly, of Echo herself.

“ _Wocha_ ,” Echo says, by way of a greeting. _Chief._ “My name is Echo. I’ve been sent by King Roan with an emissary of Skaikru.”

Mara’s dark eyes flick back and forth slowly between Bellamy and Echo, her gaze cool and assessing. “ _Em Trig chicha?_ ”

“ _Bida. Gonasleng moubeda._ ”

Mara looks to Bellamy. “What is your name, Sky person?”

Bellamy glances at Echo, but she’s looking at Mara; her neutral countenance offers him no insight. “Bellamy,” he says. “ _Bilaik koma_.” _It’s an honor._

Echo told him earlier not to offer his hand for a shake unless she indicated that he should—how Echo planned to indicate this, she didn’t specify—but it feels strange, introducing himself in a foreign language with no diplomatic gesture. He takes a step forward to bring himself even with Echo, and the uneasy shift among the ranks is palpable. Bellamy stills instantly.

“ _Em fayogon_ ,” the guard who first spoke to Echo says, his voice a low growl. 

Bellamy looks to Echo, and she says, “Your gun. They want you disarmed.”

Bellamy looks from Echo to Mara, but her expression is even more unreadable than Echo’s. “What? No.”

It’s not as though he really has a choice; they could mob him if they wanted to, and he and Echo would be hard-pressed to fend them off long enough to get back to the Rover. Or maybe Echo would let them take him, and without a gun, he would be worse than useless—

“Bellamy,” Echo says. He finds her eyes on him, dark and sharp like flint. “Do you remember what I told you?” 

A beat passes. Her gaze fixes him in place. “I gave you my word,” she says.

At the lake, she promised that no harm would come to him, or to his people, as long as he’s with her. It’s his move now, his decision: to trust her, or not.

Bellamy reaches for his holster and draws out the gun. He ejects the magazine in one swift motion, tosses it lightly at Mara’s feet, and makes a little show of holding the gun up by his head, pointed skywards, and pulling the trigger so that the gun clicks uselessly. 

“That good enough for you?” he asks.

He has extra ammunition in his pants and jacket pockets, of course, but without a pat-down, they don’t know that. Probably not a tough guess, though.

Mara raises her eyebrows slightly, then nods. “Good enough, Ambassador.” 

She pauses, letting her gaze flick back and forth between the two of them again, more slowly this time, like a predator trying to decide which of them will make a better meal. “Now, why has the king sent the two of you to Tronto? Does he need some of my warriors? He can’t be moving on the Sky people, if you’ve brought one of them here; so is it Lexa he moves against?”

Echo’s lips purse slightly before relaxing. “Your warriors are known to be formidable, but we have no need of them at present. The king intends to honor the Commander’s coalition.”

“For his sake and the coalition’s,” Mara says, “I hope King Roan’s intentions are purer than his mother’s.” 

Her warriors shift again, muttering, smirking, though whether they’re amused at Lexa’s, Roan’s, or Nia’s expense is unclear. Echo doesn’t falter. “An alliance with Skaikru and the other clans is the way forward,” she says. “The king regrets that he couldn’t travel here himself to deliver the message.”

Bellamy doubts this. Mara seems to, as well, if the way her upper lip curls slightly is any indication. “I’m sure he does,” she says. “Walk with me, will you? Both of you.”

Echo nods, and Mara says something to her warriors, her tone cool and authoritative. They quiet and begin to walk, en masse, back towards the gates, though none of them look especially happy about it, their gazes lingering on Bellamy as they turn away. Mara nods once, then turns as if to lead Bellamy and Echo after them, towards the city. 

Bellamy feels an instinctive thrill of anxiety lurch in him at the inevitability of leaving the Rover behind. Echo is already one step ahead.

“The vehicle,” she says, following Mara. “It won’t be touched, yes?”

“Not unless I give the order,” Mara says calmly. From behind, she seems even more petite, though she’s solidly built. Her hair is bound back in a simple braid, coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck. The hilt of the sword strapped to her back gleams a dull copper in the sunlight.

With longer legs, Echo and Bellamy catch up easily, flanking the chief. She moves at an unhurried pace, her countenance unperturbed. “I remember the king from when he was just a prince,” she says after a moment, her gaze ahead. “He was a lazy, impudent boy when the queen brought him here.”

“The king has changed greatly since the last time he was in Tronto.”

“I should hope so,” Mara says. “And what about you, guardswoman? Have you been to the northern reaches before?”

“Once,” Echo says. “The same time as the king.”

“You must have been just a girl.”

“I was,” Echo says. Bellamy can see her face only in profile; her expression is entirely blank, her gaze forward much like the chief’s. “But my father was from here. One of your warriors, in fact.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Echo says. “His name was Jax.”

Mara glances at Echo, though neither her pace nor her expression falters. “Yes, I remember him,” she says, studying Echo for a few seconds as they walk before turning her gaze forward again. “You favor him. I hope, for your sake, only in looks.”

This is spoken so easily that it takes a second for Bellamy to register the cruelty of it, whatever its true implications are. Echo’s expression doesn’t reflect strong offense—only a very brief, tight smirk. Whatever attempt to curry favor she was making has failed, but she can’t take it back. “I couldn’t say.”

Mara gives a little smirk of her own, and Bellamy feels an instinctive surge of dislike for her. Almost as if sensing this, she turns her attention to him, still looking faintly amused. “I’ll admit I never expected to meet a Sky person, except maybe on a battlefield.”

“From what I’ve heard,” Bellamy says, “it’s fortunate for my people that it hasn’t come to that.”

He ought to leave the flattery to Echo—he can’t pull it off half as well as she can. He almost doesn’t want to. Let Mara read the sarcasm in his tone. She doesn’t have to like him; she only needs to know that Skaikru is here—in the coalition, on the planet—to stay.

They reach the entrance to the city, and Mara leads them through the gates. To Bellamy’s surprise, only one of her guards follows—the one who demanded that Bellamy be disarmed—as the rest remain at the wall. The city is, immediately, a lot like Polis—both decaying and bustling at once. They catch eyes as they walk, seemingly without purpose, down the center of the street, but Bellamy was expecting as much after yesterday. The people clear a path for Mara, though they don’t seem afraid, just respectful. They look much the same as the people of Montreal—thin, scarred, watchful. 

This close, Bellamy can see more scars on Mara than just the intentional ones at her temples. A white half-moon curves from below her right ear down along her jaw, finishing at her chin. There’s a thin slice through one of her dark eyebrows. 

“So King Roan has allied with Skaikru,” Mara prompts. Bellamy looks away quickly.

“My people are part of the coalition,” Bellamy says, with as little inflection as he can manage. “We’re allied with every clan now.”

“Azgeda never entertained alliances before,” Mara says. “Not until Lexa forced Nia’s hand. Now the queen is dead by _Lexa’s_ hand—and we are still allies.” 

Bellamy glances at Echo over the top of Mara’s head; she raises her eyebrows at him as if to indicate he should continue. Perhaps she’s as surprised as he is that he’s actually being spoken to—or that he hasn’t blown it already. He’s not about to touch the Nia comment with a ten foot pole, though; that’s between Lexa and Azgeda. “Your people must be used to isolation, living so remotely,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.”

“And yet we have,” Mara says, drawing to a sudden halt, “for as long as I have been alive and longer. Tell me, spy, does the king intend to honor his people the way he intends to honor the other clans?”

Echo turns to face Mara, who is smiling faintly now, though without real mirth. “The king is doing this for the good of our people,” Echo says. “Skaikru has resources the likes of which haven’t been seen since Praimfaiya. Their medicine and their tech make them a useful ally.”

“Useful,” Mara says. “But not trustworthy.”

“Perhaps. But a betrayal would be their folly. They can’t win a war against us.”

“They won a war against the Mountain,” Mara says, raising her eyebrows.

Bellamy swallows. Echo’s gaze flicks to him. “Yes,” she says. “The ambassador was among those who dealt the death blow.”

Mara glances at him. Her expression doesn’t give away whether she finds this information surprising or not. “Alongside Wanheda?”

“Before Wanheda,” Echo says, still watching Bellamy. “He infiltrated the Mountain. His actions saved hundreds of lives.”

And ended hundreds, too. Bellamy bites down on the inside of his bottom lip, distracting himself from this thought with the sharp sting of pain. It occurs to him that they’re standing in the middle of the street, exposed, with dozens of people milling around them. He wishes Mara would start walking again. They need to keep moving.

“They threatened your people,” Mara says, her tone low. “You succeeded where many others failed.”

“Yeah, well,” Bellamy says, meeting her eyes as evenly as he can. _We did what we had to do._ “It’s done now.” 

Mara’s gaze lingers. If Bellamy didn’t know any better, he’d almost think there was a gleam of approval in her eyes. 

Echo changes tact. “The king would like to aid the people of Tronto in any way he can—with our resources or the Commander’s. I can carry your message to him.”

“You mean my terms.”

“‘Terms’ implies you’re negotiating with the king,” Echo says, lifting her chin slightly. “This is not a negotiation.”

“I don’t wish to negotiate with the king,” Mara says. “Or with his Commander.”

Her dark eyes glitter in the sunlight as if with amusement, but the tension that sparks between the two almost fizzles in the air. They couldn’t be more different—one tall and lean, one short and scarred—but Mara’s air of calm superiority is so like Echo’s that it’s almost unnerving. 

Or, at least, like the air of superiority that Echo shrugs on like a favored fur coat. It does slip now and then.

“Look,” Bellamy says, “can I level with you?”

This gets their attention. Bellamy deliberately doesn’t look at Echo, but he can practically feel her gaze boring a hole in him as she wills him not to screw this up. The street seems less crowded now, quieter, as though people are giving the three of them a wide berth.

“By all means,” Mara says coolly.

“I don’t trust Lexa much either,” Bellamy says. “She betrayed my people at Mount Weather, and innocent people died. But I don’t want any more innocents to die.”

“So why not seek retribution from her?” Mara asks. “Lexa is not an innocent.”

“Neither am I,” Bellamy says. “Echo’s right—my people won’t survive a war with yours. But are you willing to risk that yours will survive a war with mine?”

Mara receives this with a thin smile. Bellamy senses he’s walking an incredibly fine line; he’s cognizant of the guard lingering only a few feet away, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Bellamy could be cut down before he has a chance to reach his gun, let alone load it. 

“Your people look thin,” he presses on. “I bet the winters are hard. My people didn’t survive in space by chance, you know; we overcame scarcity countless times. If there’s something that could make your lives easier—medical care, supplies—maybe we can help.”

Mara studies him for a few beats. Bellamy can feel Echo watching him, too, but he doesn’t dare look at her. He doesn’t think he could withstand her doubt—and he certainly wouldn’t know how to handle her trust. 

“You took down the Mountain,” Mara says calmly, “and now you stand here, all but insulting my people with offers of aid. You’re either very brave or very foolish, Sky boy.”

Echo—among others—would probably say he’s both. “I’m no boy,” Bellamy says. “I mean no offense to you or your people. But my offer stands.”

He holds her gaze for a moment, then a moment longer—longer than he dares, and then some. She finally seems to be considering him with some serious regard, although she still has a vague air of being in on a joke.

“You mean to be our ally,” she says. “Our brother in arms. Would you be scarred?”

Bellamy blinks. “What—my face?”

Echo cuts in, her tone sharp. She shifts her weight. “It’s not his people’s way.”

“Neither is it yours, spy,” Mara says.

Loathing rises in Bellamy again, a firecracker burst of irritation. He looks at Echo, but of course she doesn’t show whether the barb has landed. She’s looking at him, her brow very slightly furrowed. Ready to give him an out, maybe—brave fool that he is.

“I’ll do it,” Bellamy says.

This earns him another thin smile from Mara. “My arm,” he says. “That’s it.”

“As you wish,” she says. She turns to look at her guard and says something in rapid Trigedasleng. He stares back at her for a beat, seemingly shocked, and then nods. Then he and Mara set off together at a quick pace, leaving Echo and Bellamy to follow.

“You don’t have to do this,” Echo mutters, low enough to barely be audible, not looking at him as she speaks.

He can’t believe it himself; he doesn’t dare stop long enough to consider the matter properly. “What happened to _‘oso tai choda up kom jus_?’”

Now she does look at him, fixing him with a familiar baleful stare as they wend their way down the street after Mara. “That’s not what this is, Bellamy,” she says. “This is a test.”

“Let’s hope I pass,” Bellamy says.

They walk about five more minutes, then come to a halt at a small, squat building—a guard post or dwelling, judging by the armed men loitering out front. Mara leads them inside into a large, torch-lit front room, then barks at a guard sitting at a table, “ _Stot au faya_.”

The young woman jumps to her feet, moving swiftly towards a rough-hewn fireplace set in one wall. Bellamy watches, feeling vaguely delirious, as she begins to build a fire.

“Can I see?” he asks. “What you’re going to do to me.”

Mara seems to mull this over for a second, and then says to her personal guard, “ _Skaifaya_.” He nods, his expression grim, looking at Bellamy with more than a hint of distaste. The marks on _his_ face span from his temples to his chin, half-moons formed of intricate whorls of scar tissue.

“A star, I think,” Mara says. “You are from the sky, after all.”

Bellamy swallows. “Fine,” he says.

A chair is pulled from the table to sit near the fireplace as Bellamy continues watching numbly. Echo mutters, “Your things—give them to me.”

He sheds his pack, then his jacket and finally his shirt; Echo tucks his belongings into a corner of the room and returns. “The chair,” she says, nodding towards it. “Sit.”

He’s returned to himself enough to glare at her for the order, but he does as instructed. He’s close enough to the fire that he can hear every _pop!_ of the kindling. The male guard has left the room while the female bustles about at a shelf, clinking dishware and bottles together. Mara stands near the center of the room, observing the goings-on. 

“Alco will do the honors and Bria will assist,” Mara says when she notices Bellamy watching her. “If you were Azgeda, it would be far more ceremonial. As you’re not, this will go faster.” 

“Lucky me,” Bellamy says.

Mara raises her eyebrows. “It’s not your face, not a warrior’s mark, but it _is_ an honor,” she says. “One that has never been extended to an outsider, to my knowledge. How better to tie our people together, Ambassador?”

Bellamy wants to tell her to go float herself, but he doesn’t get the chance. The girl—Bria, presumably—approaches with a small cup in one hand and a leather strip in the other. When Bellamy looks at her offering blankly, Mara cuts in. “The leather is for you to bite down on,” she says. “The whiskey to give you strength.”

Bellamy forgoes the leather strap, both out of concern for how many other people may have been chewing on it and because it feels like the weaker choice. The whiskey he accepts, draining the cup in one long sip. It goes down smoother than Monty’s moonshine, but not by much.

Alco returns, holding a small cloth bundle that he places on the hearth and unrolls, revealing a collection of knives and small metal instruments. Bellamy bites down on his lip again.

Echo shifts her weight next to him, the movement discreet but perceptible. He looks up at her briefly; her eyes are on the knives. He opens his mouth to tell her to relax, or maybe to crack a joke, then holds his tongue, wary of the listening ears around them. It wouldn’t do to make her look weak in front of them. Not now. 

Then Alco grunts, “Which arm, Sky person.”

Bellamy deliberately does not look up at him; the resentment rings loud and clear as it is. This is almost certainly an insult to Ice Nation customs, and perhaps he was expected to demur out of respect, rather than call the bluff—but considering the circumstances, Bellamy’s having a hard time feeling bad for the guy with the knife. 

“My left,” he says. His right is his dominant, so he’ll at least be able to favor his other arm.

Alco is already on his left, and grunts softly in what must be assent. He crouches down to select a small knife, then hands it to Bria, who has put on a pair of thick leather gloves. She sticks the blade into the fire, and they all watch in silence as the metal slowly begins to glow. Bellamy hopes the heat will have a sterilizing effect, although he doubts its effect on his skin will be pleasant.

“Are you ready, Bellamy kom Skaikru?” Mara asks from behind him. Bellamy nearly starts at the sound of her mellifluous voice.

“Yeah,” he says flatly. And he thought they were sparing him the theatrics. 

He does his best not to flinch, even as the hot blade approaches his arm, wielded by someone who might take a certain kind of pleasure in hurting him. His heartbeat thuds in his chest, an instinctive response to the threat of pain, to fear. He could still stop this. Instead he stares into the fire and simply refuses to move. 

It hurts, very badly—a firm slice into his upper arm, with the tip of the blade at the deltoid. He almost can’t believe he doesn’t cry out, or even groan. He can’t believe he’s letting this happen. He expected at the beginning of this day that they might have to make a quick exit, leaving a revolt brewing in their wake—now here he is, submitting himself to a bit of light torture in the name of diplomacy.

“Don’t tense your arm,” Bria murmurs. “You’ll ruin the lines.”

It’s not going to be pretty one way or the other, but Bellamy heeds her warning. He grips the edge of his seat with his right hand but lets his left arm relax. Alco takes a cloth proffered to him by Bria and wipes at Bellamy’s arm, sending a lightning bolt of agony shooting through his nerves. Bellamy doesn’t have time to protest before the next cut.

The room is quiet, save for the soft noises of the fire and the thrum of Bellamy’s pulse in his ears. They can all probably hear him breathing—fast, animal breaths, bullish and pained. He forces himself to breathe slowly and keeps looking into the fire, letting its flickering warmth daze him until the edges of his vision go dark as he stares into the light.

The whiskey has done next to nothing to numb the pain, but it’s at least becoming easier to keep his muscles relaxed. His head feels lighter on his neck. Bria puts the blade back into the fire to heat it again. Bellamy smells something that reminds him faintly of burnt copper wire—Raven bustling with something in her workshop?—then realizes it’s his blood sizzling on the knife.

“Bellamy,” Echo says, her voice piercing the cotton batting that has fallen over his ears. “Look at me.”

He turns his head and finds her looking down at him, her face like a pale moon above him. She’s frowning slightly. 

“Whiskey,” Bellamy says.

She steps away, returning from the shadows a beat later with the cup. Bellamy gulps from it, then hands it back to Echo as Alco moves back in with the knife. 

Bellamy doesn’t look at the cutting—he might really embarrass himself if he does. Instead he looks at Echo, struck by the crease between her brows, the set of her jaw. It’s an expression he’s rarely, if ever, seen on her. Worry. For their mission? That depends on whether he made the correct choice—accepting their tradition at the risk of making a grave insult in the process.

He keeps looking at her, trying to communicate that _it’s going to be fine_ , and she doesn’t break the gaze. Her eyes—there’s something briefly unhidden in her eyes, wide as they are. A kind of fervency. Bellamy recognizes that look on some level beyond conscious thought, a primal understanding. 

He says nothing. But he doesn’t look away.

He loses track of time as he studies Echo—a small mercy. Alcohol and pain have dulled his ability to focus, anyway. The contours of her face have begun to blur when Alco swipes at his arm with the cloth one final time and says, “ _Odon_.”

Bellamy blinks, swallowing against the sharp taste of alcohol and bile in his mouth. He turns his head with a stiff neck. His left upper arm is, unsurprisingly, a red, inflamed mess. His whole body aches, strangely, maybe because of the posture he’s been holding. 

Leather boots creak softly behind him as Mara approaches. Alco moves away so that Mara can replace him at Bellamy’s side. Her rough-skinned fingertips dig into the meat of his bicep as she lifts his arm to inspect the bloody mess there. Bellamy does his best not to wince.

Mara gaze travels thoughtfully from his arm to his face. “Very well, Ambassador,” she says. “Ally of Tronto.” 

She releases his arm, and he sags slightly in the chair, but holds her gaze for a beat longer. He will not cower. Her smirk tells him she may never have expected him to in the first place.

“We bind each other with blood,” Bellamy says hoarsely.

Mara smiles, showing a hint of teeth. Then she looks over his head at Echo. “Guardswoman. Shall we discuss my terms?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the non-self explanatory trig:
> 
>  _Em Trig chicha?_ Does he speak Trig?
> 
>  _Bida. Gonasleng moubeda._ A bit. English is better.
> 
> feedback is always appreciated!


	4. where it stays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The bottom’s going to fall out,” Echo comments mildly.
> 
> Bellamy turns the Rover’s windshield wipers to a higher frequency and eases his foot off the pedal slightly. “The bottom of what?”
> 
> “The sky, of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last ride for now, folks! thank you so much to all of you who've commented, i do really appreciate feedback! ❤︎
> 
> warnings for: discussions of blood, injury, and torture

Echo’s already noticed the clouds, of course, by the time Bellamy brings them up.

“The wind’s picking up,” she says, nodding at the passenger window. It’s difficult to tell with the Rover in motion, but the branches outside do seem to be swaying slightly. They’re traveling another crumbling asphalt road and the terrain is heavily forested, encroaching on the path, but the sky above is definitely graying. “We’re going to meet a storm, I think.”

The rain begins a few minutes later—lightly, at first, then with building intensity. “The bottom’s going to fall out,” Echo comments mildly.

Bellamy turns the Rover’s windshield wipers to a higher frequency and eases his foot off the pedal slightly. “The bottom of what?”

“The sky, of course.”

Bellamy snorts, glancing at her briefly. She looks unusually relaxed in the passenger seat; she’s actually pulled her legs up under her, her hands loosely folded in her lap. “Well,” Bellamy says. “Good thing we’re not on horseback.”

Echo rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t look displeased. He’s come to know the shape of her mouth like the back of his hand; he recognizes when she’s withholding amusement. “You Sky people are so soft.”

The weather was fine when they left Tronto—early, of course, in the purple hour just before dawn; despite that, Mara was there to see them off with a half-convincing farewell message. Bellamy’s keen to put some mileage between him and the city, although after yesterday’s work, he’ll probably be back sooner rather than later. Jackson and Raven aren’t going to be happy when they find out they’ve been volunteered for a future trip to Tronto, where they’ll assess public health and the possibility of one day building a radio tower, respectively. C’est la vie.

It’s been a quiet morning, much the same as the previous three—little talk, save for Echo murmuring directions. It’s actually been kind of peaceful, despite how eager Bellamy is to get home. The quiet between them has been comfortable, even though after the last three days it seems like it should be more tense than ever. The only discomfort—other than physical—has come from his attempts to avoid thinking about the last three days.

Bearing those efforts in mind, Bellamy swallows the joke that occurs to him, focusing on the road instead. The Rover’s headlights are of little use at this hour, though the sky is rapidly darkening, and Echo’s right—the rain is only getting worse. Within a couple more minutes, it’s pounding down on the Rover. Even with the wipers on the highest setting, Bellamy has to squint out the windshield in order to follow the curvature of the winding, tree-lined road.

“You know, a hundred years ago,” he says as thunder booms overhead, “this was probably a scenic drive. Something people did for fun.”

“Why would anyone do this for fun?” Echo mutters, shifting in her seat. “Cooped up in something like this.”

“Well, it probably wouldn’t be so bad with decent company.”

“I’m not impressed with what I’ve got,” Echo says dryly, and this—combined with another thunderclap—startles Bellamy into laughter.

Laughing makes his arm twinge a little—any subtle shift of his upper body does, actually. With the day’s sobriety has come a dull, persistent ache. The abused flesh throbs again as Bellamy leans forward slightly in his seat for a better vantage point, but he withholds a grimace.

“D’you see that?” he asks, nodding to indicate the road ahead. “A log?”

It’s substantially more than a log—it’s a downed tree lying haphazardly across the road, surrounded by a mess of foliage and branches. This isn’t the first felled tree they’ve come across, though it looks to be the most substantial. Bellamy brakes and moves his hand to the gearshift, but it’s going to be a tough squeeze getting around it, even by offroading; the forest is dense on either side of the road, thick enough with trees that heavy branches periodically _whap!_ against the Rover’s front hood and windshield. And it’s still _pouring_.

“If I get a bit of distance, I can probably get us over that,” Bellamy says. “This thing is designed for hazardous terrain.”

Echo’s look is distinctly skeptical. “And what if you can’t?”

As much as Bellamy would like to see her shock and awe, there is a greater than zero chance of flipping the Rover or getting stuck. He’d never admit it, but he’s not as good a driver as Raven. “Then we might have to backtrack. Unless you think we can clear a path.”

“And get out in this?” Echo says, her distaste obvious.

Bellamy glances at her. “Now who’s soft?”

Echo gives him a baleful look, then leans down to fish her coat out of the floorboard.

Trying to move the tree trunk is, of course, immediately revealed to be an exercise in futility. Once they’re out in the rain and able to get a better look at it, it’s thicker around than Bellamy had anticipated. It’s clearly been there for a while, the color of the bark gone dull with age, but the wood hasn’t rotted nearly enough to make it light enough to maneuver. Bellamy gives the trunk one good shove and gives up, following Echo’s lead and investigating the sides of the road. There’s even more logs and downed foliage on either side, some of it probably brought down by the tree as it fell.

“The Rover might be able to move it,” Bellamy says, looking back at Echo. “Enough so we can pass.”

Echo has the hood of her coat pulled up over her head, but her wet clothing is already sticking to her. “We might as well wait for this to clear up,” she says decisively. Then she turns around and heads back to the Rover.

Bellamy sighs, but follows; he’s not keen to linger in the rain either. Echo shucks her wet jacket once she’s back in the front seat, then gets up and eases her way into the back of the Rover. “We still have some soup left,” she says. “Are you hungry for lunch yet?”

“Cold stew, exciting. I’d rather a change of clothes.” Bellamy shakes wet bangs out of his eyes and turns in the driver’s seat to look back at her. “Are you sure it’s safe for us to stop?”

“We’re in Podakru lands,” Echo says, digging through their assorted supplies. The hem of her shirt has ridden up, revealing a glimpse of pale belly. Her black pants, already form-fitting, are sodden and clinging now. “No one has ever lost sleep to fears of Podakru raiders.”

Bellamy sighs, then locks both the front doors and turns up the heat output before making his way into the back, too. It’s cramped with both of them standing, so he sits down in one of the seats to wait his turn with the supplies. He sheds his own jacket, which unfortunately isn’t waterproof—he’s soaked through, and somewhat regretting his decision to brave the weather at all if they’re just going to wait it out. Thunder rumbles overhead again, close, and the rain keeps pounding. 

Echo turns from the storage compartment, a single spoon in her hand, her mouth open to speak. Her expression softens in surprise when her eyes land on him. “Bellamy. Your arm.”

“Hm?” he says, looking down at his left sleeve. A dark, ruddy stain has bloomed on the gray fabric. Either blood has gradually soaked through the bandage or he’s managed to aggravate the wound. “Oh. Well, it’ll wash out.”

“You should let me look at it,” Echo says, frowning. She puts the spoon away, then reaches for the handkerchief she keeps in her pocket. “I’ll change the bandage.”

Realizing she means to tear off a piece of fabric, Bellamy shakes his head. “There’s a first-aid kit,” he says, nodding to indicate the far corner of the Rover. “The box with the red label on it. Should be some bandages in there.”

Echo locates the small kit and pops it open, inspecting the contents while Bellamy gingerly peels off his wet shirt. Lifting his left arm hurts like a son of a bitch, so it takes him a few seconds. The white bandage Bria applied yesterday is stained a deep reddish-brown with both dried and fresh blood.

Echo approaches with the kit, and they do a bit of awkward shuffling to allow her to sit next to him and spread the first aid kit out on her lap. “You can clean it with some of this,” Bellamy says, reaching out with his right hand to tap the small bottle of alcohol in the kit. “Rather not lose the arm to infection if I can help it.”

Echo rolls her eyes, presumably at this display of _softness_ , but doesn’t say anything as she reaches for the bandage on his arm. Her fingers are cool, her touch delicate as she carefully unwraps the cloth binding. The wound twinges as the wet fabric peels away, and Echo hisses very softly, almost as if she can feel it, too.

Of course not—she’s reacting to the wound. From top to bottom it’s about six inches long, and about the same in width, with multiple cuts making up the whole. It’s bloody in spots and inflamed in others, only the loose outline of a five-pointed star visible for how bloody and puffy the skin is. “They did a shit job cauterizing it,” Bellamy mutters.

“Of course they did,” Echo says as she sets aside the bloody cloth. “What, did you think that’s how it’s normally done? I’ve never seen a scarring done in less than a few hours.” 

Bellamy can’t imagine being subjected to that for hours—especially not had they been scarring his face like a warrior’s, making dozens or hundreds of delicate cuts. Almost as if following his train of thought, Echo says, “You do realize for a real scarring ceremony, you would’ve been drugged.” 

“Drugged?” Bellamy says. “With what?”

“I’m not exactly sure what’s in it,” Echo admits as she takes a piece of cloth from the kit and lightly douses it with the acrid-smelling isopropyl alcohol. “I’ve never participated in a scarring, only witnessed. It’s a drink to calm the nerves and dull the pain. The young ones cry too much without it, and the older ones can’t be trusted to go through with it.”

He’s not sure who she means can’t go through with it, the adults being scarred or the adults scarring children; either way, it’s an objectively horrifying thought, though Echo speaks it matter-of-factly, plainly. She speaks it as a fact of life—a _way_ of life.

She starts gently dabbing at his arm before he has a chance to respond. He can’t help it—he lets out a pained hiss, tensing slightly against the sharp sting. He expects Echo to make a joke, maybe call him a weakling, but she just glances up at his face briefly. “Sorry.”

“S’okay,” Bellamy says. “ _Fuck_. Okay.”

She huffs, amused, and finishes quickly, setting aside the pinkened fabric in favor of a fresh strip of cloth from the kit. Bellamy takes the opportunity to inspect his arm while it’s less bloodstained; some of the cuts are still bleeding. “It needs stitches,” Bellamy says. “Abby’s not going to be happy with me. Wasted time and resources. Practically a fatal offense where we come from.”

Echo makes a little moue as she fishes around in the kit, coming up after a few seconds with a small, silver pair of scissors. “You did get lucky in that way,” she says. “If you were Azgeda, they’d repeat the cutting or burning again in a few weeks to make the scars really stick. No drugs that time.”

Bellamy doesn’t scar much, luckily for him; still, he’ll probably end up with something silver and gnarled by the end of it. He still hasn’t quite allowed himself to process this as a permanent addition to his body yet. “Good thing I’m not Azgeda.”

Echo pauses very slightly in the middle of cutting the cloth in half. “No,” she says. “I guess not.”

She gives the fabric a decisive final snip, and Bellamy, despite himself, hastens to course-correct. “I don’t mean to offend,” he says. “I don’t think I’d make the cut, to be honest—no pun intended, of course.”

She softens slightly; the corner of her mouth quirks upwards. She reaches for him and he obliges, lifting his arm so she can wind the bandage around it. “Scars aren’t the only things that make a warrior,” she says.

His gaze shifts automatically to her temples, her high forehead, her smooth, unblemished cheeks. It occurs to him suddenly that he’s glad she’s never been cut up like that—not because it would alter her beauty, although that might be true, but because the idea of her suffering fills him with a brief, unsettling disquiet. Maybe Echo would’ve rather been treated like the rest of her clanspeople—or maybe not, given her particular talents. Bellamy doesn’t dare assume he knows her mind, although he does get lucky sometimes.

Echo tucks the bandage neatly once she’s finished wrapping it around his arm. She’s affixed it less tightly than Bria had—it’s much more comfortable. “I hope you know, though,” she says, “that you didn’t have to do this. I wouldn’t mention it to any of my people, other than the king. Mara should never have suggested it in the first place.”

“Yeah, I know, she just wanted to see me squirm,” Bellamy says. “But I figure it beats Kane’s brand, right?”

Echo scoffs. “Please. I thought you were going to faint dead away, you got so pale. Your pride will be the death of you.”

“ _My_ pride?” Bellamy says, raising his eyebrows as he turns toward her slightly. Their knees brush. “ _Your_ pride would’ve had Mara putting our heads on pikes yesterday.”

Echo’s expression stiffens—almost imperceptibly, but it’s hard to miss, sitting up close like this with no road ahead of them to focus on. She begins packing up the first-aid kit, tucking everything neatly back into place. “You were never in any danger, Bellamy.”

“Hey,” Bellamy says quickly, reaching out with his left hand and catching hold of her wrist. “Easy. It was—I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.”

Echo stills, looking down at his hand on her wrist. He slackens his grip, but doesn’t let go, more out of wonder than anything; he can’t believe he’s touching her this openly, this tenderly, and she’s allowing it. It feels like holding something fragile, like cupping a little bird in his palms. He thought the lake would be the last time—the only time—for this kind of tenderness. 

She didn’t come to him last night; he slept thinly as a result, unable to relax, though he knew she was just in the other room of the house Mara put them up in. He wasn’t even particularly uneasy—just lonely.

“You should change,” Echo says, lifting her gaze. “You’re trembling.”

He’s covered in goosebumps. “Admit it,” he says. “You just want me to take my clothes off.”

Her expression is steady, watchful, but there’s a hint of amusement in it. He’d almost say it’s fondness. “Bellamy,” she says. “You fool.”

Maybe he is a fool—it’s one possible explanation for why he leans in to kiss her. But she can’t be much better off, because she parts her lips almost instantly, tilting her head to better align their faces. For all the coldness she’s ever shown, she’s warm now.

She deepens the kiss and he reaches for her with both hands, trying to encourage her to move to his lap. Instead she clasps at his elbow and guides them both down to the floor.

They peel wet clothes off from a tangle of limbs, too busy kissing to undress with efficiency. Bellamy should hesitate to get naked in the Rover in the middle of the day, in the middle of the wilderness at that, but there doesn’t seem to be much point in hesitation when he knows he’s going to do it anyway. This might be his last chance—this fever dream of a trip his only opportunity—to do this. It’s something they’ve been building towards, it seems like, since the cages.

He doesn’t want to think about the mountain. He doesn’t want to think about anything. He tries to roll them over, to put her on her back in the cramped central floorspace between the seats, but she tenses her thighs on either side of his hips and shakes her head.

“Let me,” she says, looking at his mouth as if to avoid his eyes. “I want it—like this.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, only mildly embarrassed by how ragged his voice has already become. “Okay.”

So it’s him on his back, then, her above him, riding him slowly. She’s strong, appealingly so, but there’s a shivery quality to her movements now, a shyness. Her hands are braced on the seats on either side of her. She’s biting her bottom lip, controlling the huff of her breath. Maybe she didn’t realize she’d be so on display like this.

Bellamy shifts up onto his elbows, then moves his hands to her hips and squeezes. “Echo.”

She stills, her lips parting as he skims his hands upwards to grasp her waist. He can feel her ribs under his palms, but at least he can’t see them. He exerts gentle pressure on her waist and she obligingly leans down to kiss him, meeting him in the middle and bracing her hands lightly on his chest. For a moment she lingers with her lips barely brushing his, and then she gasps into his mouth when he rolls his hips up against her slowly. It’s good, too good by half; he moves a hand to the nape of her neck, tangling in her hair to hold her there, her mouth almost against his, while they rock together.

Thunder booms overhead again; Echo gasps, her strong thighs tensing, and Bellamy huffs a laugh, startled. He’d forgotten it was raining. “Bellamy,” Echo breathes, the word rolling off her tongue as she comes, “Bellamy, oh—”

He comes in her hand a few moments later, her mouth soft on the shell of his ear, murmuring something too lowly for him to really hear. It sounds like _good, that’s good,_ and it knocks a shivery rumble of pleasure out of him. This is so much more than he ever anticipated.

She lingers over him for a moment, her mouth at his hair, then leans back slightly to look at him. “Your arm,” she says. “Are you in pain?”

There’s already a spot of red soaking through the aged white bandage, but the injury doesn’t hurt any worse than baseline. Bellamy makes a wry face at her. “I’m fine,” he says. “You did most of the work.”

Echo colors slightly, high on her cheeks, which is frankly hilarious given that she’s still naked and kneeling over him. There’s a light purple bruise on her neck from where he bit her the day before yesterday. What have they been doing?

She shifts, reaching between the seats to his right and finding his shirt, which she uses to wipe her hand. Bellamy sucks his teeth at her, and she raises her eyebrows at him. “I thought you wanted to change.”

He holds eye contact with her, but he can’t help it—it _is_ funny. He grins, and she rolls her eyes and gets gracefully to her feet, then offers him a hand. They dress quietly, Bellamy fetching his last set of clean clothes—or, at least, reasonably clean clothes—and Echo putting on her shirt and a dry pair of pants. Then, instead of heading for the front like he expects her to, Echo moves towards the back doors.

She opens the left-hand door fully, then the right halfway. It’s still raining, though it seems to have lightened up a tad. Thunder continues to rumble periodically. “Fresh air,” Echo says, glancing back at him. “The windows have fogged up.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything, unsure what to make of this, but he nods. Echo’s expression is strangely hesitant, like she’s about to ask for something, but no question is forthcoming; instead, she looks away, then carefully sits down on the floor by the doors, her back to him. 

Bellamy stands near the front of the Rover for a few seconds, nonplussed, his head ducked to avoid brushing the roof. “Echo,” he says.

“Just a minute, Bellamy,” she says, sounding—tired, strangely. Put-out.

Bellamy gives it a few seconds as he wrestles with an internal debate. Finally, he moves to the driver’s seat and turns the Rover’s engine off; no sense wasting power, although he can’t see a reason for them to stick around much longer. They’ll have to try and get the Rover around the tree one way or another, or else turn back—which will add at least another hour or two onto an already lengthy trip, unless Echo knows some secret route hidden in the woods. He wouldn’t put it past her.

Echo hasn’t moved, and she still doesn’t move as Bellamy approaches, nor does she acknowledge him when he gingerly sits down next to her. She’s sitting cross-legged to avoid getting rained on, but they’re close enough to the doors that droplets periodically find their way to a target. She’s watching the rain, her expression calm; there’s nothing the way she’s looking but road, miles and miles of it, that they’ve already traveled. Her look reminds him of the way she studied the lake—with softness, maybe a bit of reverence.

“Is something wrong?” Bellamy asks.

She glances at him. “No,” she says, and it sounds honest enough. A beat passes, and then she asks, “You told me your people made do without water and trees. Did you ever miss rain?”

Bellamy blinks. “Not really,” he says, glancing outside at the gray sky. “We saw it in movies, and learned about it in school, but—can’t miss what you never had, I guess.”

“I guess not,” Echo says.

“The smell,” Bellamy says, as it occurs to him. He glances at her again and finds her watching him instead of the rain. “It’s always so strange, smelling the rain. Ozone. It’s a good smell, though. You can’t get that from a book.”

She smiles slightly. “No, you can’t.”

“So really,” Bellamy says, softening his tone as much as he dares—for both their sakes. It seems like a deft touch might be called for, and that’s not always his strongest suit. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Echo says, frowning slightly now. “It’s just—you were right. About yesterday.”

It takes him a moment to remember what she’s referring to. “About pride?”

“Yes,” Echo says. Her jaw clenches very briefly before relaxing. She looks out at the rain again. “I’ve never failed at a mission before. And I think, if you hadn’t been with me, that I would have failed yesterday.”

“You did fine,” Bellamy says. “And if you hadn’t been with me, I’d probably be dead in a ravine somewhere, so.”

Echo gives a mirthless smile. “Not a ravine,” she says. “Mara would have sent your body home to make a point.”

“Sweet of her,” Bellamy says, and is rewarded with a genuine half-smile. “Flattering of you to think so highly of me, that I’d have even made it through Ice Nation territory.”

“You’d have found your way,” Echo says, raising her eyebrows. “Eventually.”

“That’s more like it,” Bellamy says dryly, and this time she laughs, a little chuckle that makes something delicate and birdlike shift in his chest. “So you have history with those people, that place. You’d have made it work. Just like you always do.” 

“I hope so,” she says, her expression sobering slightly. She doesn’t look unhappy—rather more grimly accepting. Bellamy will take it. Whatever bits and pieces he’s learned of her history aside, he’s not sure at what point easing her worried mind became a matter of his concern—but then, even when they were on opposite sides of a brewing war, he’s never really wanted to see her _suffer_. That much does go all the way back to the cages.

Quiet falls, save for the steady beat of the rain. “We can go,” Echo says after a moment. “I’m sorry. I only wanted some air. You must be eager to get back.”

Unbidden, he thinks of what she asked him days ago— _what do you do when you can get away from your people?_

This isn’t something that can continue, not once they’re back with their respective people. The next time they travel together, they won’t be alone; they are diplomats, after all, at least where one another is concerned. He’s not so hard up as to consider risking the fragile working relationship he’s managed to build with her, and by extension with her king and her people, mercurial and dangerous as they often are. But Bellamy really has never seen the point in hesitating.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Sometimes it’s okay to take what you want.”

Echo’s gaze flicks to him. The rain thrums on in the beat of quiet that follows.

“Yes,” she says. “Perhaps it is.” 


End file.
